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ILarge^paptr C-6ition 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 
to the Gulf 



A Thousand' Mile IValk 
to the Gulf 

By 

John Muir 




Boston and New Tork 

Houghton Mifflin Company 

igi6 



M^i 



COPYRIGHT, I916, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES 
OF THIS LARGE-PAPER EDITION 
WERE PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE 
PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, IN OCTOBER, 1916. 
FIVE HUNDRED COPIES ARE FOR 
SALE. THIS IS NUMBER 5y^. 




©CLA44658Li 



Contents 



Introduction ix 

I. Kentucky Forests and Caves i 

II. Crossing the Cumberland Mountains . . T' . 17 
in. Through the River Country of Georgia ... 47 

rV. Camping among the Tombs 66 

V. Through Florida Swamps and Forests. ... 83 

VI. Cedar Keys 123 

VII. A Sojourn in Cuba 143 

VIII. By a Crooked Route to Calefornia . . . .169 

IX. Twenty Hill Hollow 192 

Index 213 



Illustrations 



A Florida Sunset . Hand-colored Photogra'vure Frontispiece 

From a water-color by Miss Amelia M. TFatson 

John Muir about 1870 x 

From a photograph by Bradley & Rulofson^ San Francisco^ Cal. 

Inside Cover and First Page of Mr. Muir's Journal 
of his Walk to the Gulf xviii 

From the original 

Map showing Route of Walk • 1 

Kentucky Oaks ...» 

From a photograph by Theodore Eitel 

Entrance to Mammoth Cave 12 

From a photograph. By courtesy of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad 

Pages 18 and 19 of the Journal, with Sketch of 
Meeting with the Old Tennessee Farmer ... 20 

From the original 

The Clinch River, Tennessee 30 

From a photograph. By courtesy of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad 

A Southern Pine 54 

From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason 

Spanish Moss {Tillandsia) 58 

From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason 

In Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah .... 68 

From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason 

By the St. John's River in Eastern Florida . . .90 

From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason 

[vii] 



Illustrations 



A Florida Palmetto Hummock, or "Hammock** . 114 

From a photograph by Herbert K. yob 

Page of Journal with Sketch showing Palmettos in 
Different Stages OF Development . . . .118 

From the original 

A Shell Mound at Cedar Keys, Florida . . .126 

From a photograph by A. J, Smith 

Lime Key 134 

From Mr. Muir^s sketch in the original journal 

MoRRO Castle and Entrance to Havana Harbor . 148 

From a photograph 

Twenty Hill Hollow, Merced County, California . 194 

From a sketch by Mr. Muir 



Introduction 

JOHN MUIR, Earth-planet, Universe."— 
These words are written on the inside 
cover of the notebook from which the con- 
tents of this volume have been taken. They 
reflect the mood in which the late author and 
explorer undertook his thousand-mile walk to 
the Gulf of Mexico a half-century ago. No less 
does this refreshingly cosmopolitan address, 
which might have startled any finder of the 
book, reveal the temper and the comprehen- 
siveness of Mr. Muir's mind. He never was and 
never could be a parochial student of nature. 
Even at the early age of twenty-nine his eager 
interest in every aspect of the natural world had 
made him a citizen of the universe. 

While this was by far the longest botanical 
excursion which Mr. Muir made in his earlier 
years, it was by no means the only one. He 
had botanized around the Great Lakes, in 
Ontario, and through parts of Wisconsin, 
[ix] 



Introduction 

Indiana, and Illinois. On these expeditions he 
had disciplined himself to endure hardship, 
for his notebooks disclose the fact that he often 
went hungry and slept in the woods, or on the 
open prairies, with no cover except the clothes 
he wore. 

"Oftentimes," he writes in some unpublished 
biographical notes, "I had to sleep out with- 
out blankets, and also without supper or break- 
fast. But usually I had no great difficulty in 
finding a loaf of bread in the widely scattered 
clearings of the farmers. With one of these big 
backwoods loaves I was able to wander many 
a long, wild mile, free as the winds in the glori- 
ous forests and bogs, gathering plants and feed- 
ing on God's abounding, inexhaustible spiritual 
beauty bread. Only once in my long Canada 
wanderings was the deep peace of the wilder- 
ness savagely broken. It happened in the maple 
woods about midnight, when I was cold and my 
fire was low. I was awakened by the awfully 
dismal howling of the wolves, and got up in 
haste to replenish the fire.'* 
[x] 




JOHN MUIR ABOUT 1870 



Introduction 

It was not, therefore, a new species of ad- 
venture upon which Mr. Muir embarked when 
he started on his Southern foot-tour. It was 
only a new response to the lure of those favor- 
ite studies which he had already pursued over 
uncounted miles of virgin Western forests and 
prairies. Indeed, had it not been for the acci- 
dental injury to his right eye in the month of 
March, 1867, he probably would have started 
somewhat earlier than he did. In a letter writ- 
ten to Indianapolis friends on the day after the 
accident, he refers mournfully to the interrup- 
tion of a long-cherished plan. "For weeks," 
he writes, "I have daily consulted maps in lo- 
cating a route through the Southern States, the 
West Indies, South America, and Eujrope — a 
botanical journey studied for years. And so my 
mind has long been in a glow with visions of the 
glories of a tropical flora; but, alas, I am half 
blind. My right eye, trained to minute analy- 
sis, is lost and I have scarce heart to open the 
other. Had this journey been accomplished, 
the stock of varied beauty acquired would have 
[ xi] 



Introduction 

made me willing to shrink into any corner of 
the world, however obscure and however re- 
mote." 

The injury to his eye proved to be less serious 
than he had at first supposed. In June he was 
writing to a friend: "I have been reading and 
botanizing for some weeks, and find that for 
such work I am not very much disabled. I leave 
this city [Indianapolis] for home to-morrow, 
accompanied by Merrill Moores, a little friend 
of mine. We will go to Decatur, Illinois, thence 
northward through the wide prairies, botaniz- 
ing a few weeks by the way. ... I hope to go 
South towards the end of the summer, and as 
this will be a journey that I know very little 
about, I hope to profit by your counsel before 
setting out." 

In an account written after the excursion he 
says: "I was eager to see Illinois prairies on my 
way home, so we went to Decatur, near the 
center of the State, thence north [to Portage] 
by Rockford and Janesville. I botanized one 
week on the prairie about seven miles south- 
[ xii ] 



Introduction 

west of Pecatonica. ... To me all plants are 
more precious than before. My poor eye is not 
better, nor worse. A cloud is over it, but in 
gazing over the widest landscapes, I am not 
always sensible of its presence." 

By the end of August Mr. Muir was back 
again in Indianapolis. He had found it con- 
venient to spend a "botanical week'' among 
his University friends in Madison. So keen 
was his interest in plants at this time that an 
interval of five hours spent in Chicago was 
promptly turned to account in a search for 
them. "I did not find many plants in her tu- 
multuous streets," he complains; "only a few 
grassy plants of wheat, and two or three species 
of weeds, — amaranth, purslane, carpet-weed, 
etc., — the weeds, I suppose, for man to walk 
upon, the wheat to feed him. I saw some 
green algae, but no mosses. Some of the latter 
I expected to see on wet walls, and in seams on 
the pavements. But I suppose that the manu- 
facturers' smoke and the terrible noise are too 
great for the hardiest of them. I wish I knew 
[ ziii ] 



Introduction 

where I was going. Doomed to be 'carried of 
the spirit into the wilderness/ I suppose. I 
wish I could be more moderate in my desires, 
but I cannot, and so there is no rest." 

The letter noted above was written only two 
days before he started on his long walk to 
Florida. If the concluding sentences still re- 
flect indecision, they also convey a hint of the 
overmastering impulse under which he was 
acting. The opening sentences of his journal, 
afterwards crossed out, witness to this sense of 
inward compulsion which he felt." Few bodies," 
he wrote, "are inhabited by so satisfied a soul 
that they are allowed exemption from extra- 
ordinary exertion through a whole life." After 
reciting illustrations of nature's periodicity, of 
the ebbs and flows of tides, and the pulsation 
of other forces, visible and invisible, he observes 
that " so also there are tides not only in the af- 
fairs of men, but in the primal thing of life it- 
self. In some persons the impulse, being slight, 
is easily obeyed or overcome. But in others it 
is constant and cumulative in action until its 
[ xiv ] 



Introduction 

power is sufficient to overmaster all impedi- 
ments, and to accomplish the full measure of its 
demands. For many a year I have been im- 
pelled toward the Lord's tropic gardens of the 
South. Many influences have tended to blunt 
or bury this constant longing, but it has out- 
lived and overpowered them all." 

Muir's love of nature was so largely a part 
of his religion that he naturally chose Biblical 
phraseology when he sought a vehicle for his 
feelings. No prophet of old could have taken 
his call more seriously, or have entered upon 
his mission more frevently. During the long 
days of his confinement in a dark room he had 
opportunity for much reflection. He concluded 
that life was too brief and uncertain, and time 
too precious, to waste upon belts and saws ; that 
while he was pottering in a wagon factory, God 
was making a world; and he determined that, 
if his eyesight was spared, he would devote the 
remainder of his life to a study of the process. 
Thus the previous bent of his habits and studies, 
and the sobering thoughts induced by one of the 

[ XV ] 



Introduction 

bitterest experiences of his life, combined to 
send him on the long journey recorded in these 
pages. 

Some autobiographical notes found among 
his papers furnish interesting additional de- 
tails about the period between his release from 
the dark room and his departure for the South. 
"As soon as I got out into heaven's light/' he 
says, "I started on another long excursion, 
making haste with all my heart to store my 
mind with the Lord's beauty, and thus be ready 
for any fate, light or dark. And it was from 
this time that my long, continuous wanderings 
may be said to have fairly commenced. I bade 
adieu to mechanical inventions, determined to 
devote the rest of my life to the study of the 
inventions of God. I first went home to Wis- 
consin, botanizing by the way, to take leave of 
my father and mother, brothers and sisters, all 
of whom were still living near Portage. I also 
visited the neighbors I had known as a boy, 
renewed my acquaintance with them after an 
absence of several years, and bade each a formal 
[ xvi 1 



Introduction 

good-bye. When they asked where I was going 
I said, 'Oh! I don't know — just anywhere in 
the wilderness, southward. I have aheady had 
glorious gHmpses of the Wisconsin, Iowa, Mich- 
igan, Indiana, and Canada wildernesses; now 
I propose to go South and see something of the 
vegetation of the warm end of the country, and 
if possible to wander far enough into South 
America to see tropical vegetation in all its 
palmy glory.' 

"The neighbors wished me well, advised me 
to be careful of my health, and reminded 
me that the swamps in the South were full of 
malaria. I stopped overnight at the home of 
an old Scotch lady who had long been my friend 
and was now particularly motherly in good 
wishes and advice. I told her that as I was 
sauntering along the road, just as the sun was 
going down, I heard a darling speckled-breast 
sparrow singing. The day's done, the day's 
done.' 'Weel, John, my dear laddie,' she re- 
plied, 'your day will never be done. There is 
no end to the kind of studies you like so well, 
[ xvii ] 



Introduction 

but there's an end to mortals' strength of body 
and mind, to all that mortals can accomplish. 
You are sure to go on and on, but I want you 
to remember the fate of Hugh Miller/ She was 
one of the finest examples I ever knew of a kind, 
generous, great-hearted Scotchwoman/' 

The formal leave-taking from family and 
neighbors indicates his belief that he was part- 
ing from home and friends for a long time. On 
Sunday, the ist of September, 1867, Mr. Muir 
said good-bye also to his Indianapolis friends, 
and went by rail to Jefifersonville, where he 
spent the night. The next morning he crossed 
the river, walked through Louisville, and 
struck southward through the State of Ken- 
tucky. A letter written a week later "among 
the hills of Bear Creek, seven miles southeast 
of Burkesville, Kentucky," shows that he had 
covered about twenty-five miles a day. "I 
walked from Louisville," he says, "a distance 
of one hundred and seventy miles, and my feet 
are sore. But, oh! I am paid for all my toil a 
thousand times over. I am in the woods on a 
[ xviii ] 



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Introduction 

hilltop with my back against a moss-clad log. 
I wish you could see my last evening's bed- 
room. The sun has been among the tree-tops 
for more than an hour; the dew is nearly all 
taken back, and the shade in these hill basins 
is creeping away into the unbroken strongholds 
of the grand old forests. 

"I have enjoyed the trees and scenery of 
Kentucky exceedingly. How shall I ever tell 
of the miles and miles of beauty that have been 
flowing into me in such measure ? These lofty 
curving ranks of lobing, swelling hills, these 
concealed valleys of fathomless verdure, and 
these lordly trees with the nursing sunlight 
glancing in their leaves upon the outlines of the 
magnificent masses of shade embosomed among 
their wide branches — these are cut into my 
memory to go with me forever. 

"I was a few miles south of Louisville when 
I planned my journey. I spread out my map 
under a tree and made up my mind to go 
through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia 
to Florida, thence to Cuba, thence to some part 

[ XIX ] 



Introduction 

of South America; but It will be only a hasty 
walk. I am thankful, however, for so much. 
My route will be through Kingston and Madi- 
sonville, Tennessee, and through Blairsville 
and Gainesville, Georgia. Please write me 
at Gainesville. I am terribly letter-hungry. I 
hardly dare to think of home and friends." 
, In editing the journal I have endeavored, by 
use of all the available evidence, to trail Mr. 
Muir as closely as possible on maps of the sixties 
as well as on the most recent state and topo- 
graphical maps. The one used by him has not 
been found, and probably is no longer in exist- 
ence. Only about twenty-two towns and cities 
are mentioned in his journal. This constitutes 
a very small number when one considers the 
distance he covered. Evidently he was so ab- 
sorbed in the plant life of the region traversed 
that he paid no heed to towns, and perhaps 
avoided them wherever possible. 

The sickness which overtook him in Florida 
was probably of a malarial kind, although he 
describes it under different names. It was, no 

I XX] 



Introduction 

doubt, a misfortune In itself, and a severe test 
for his vigorous constitution. But it was also a 
blessing in disguise, inasmuch as it prevented 
him from carrying out his foolhardy plan of 
penetrating the tropical jungles of South 
America along the Andes to a tributary of the 
Amazon, and then floating down the river on 
a raft to the Atlantic. As readers of the jour- 
nal will perceive, he clung to this intention even 
during his convalescence at Cedar Keys and in 
Cuba. In a letter dated the 8th of Novem- 
ber he describes himself as "just creeping about 
getting plants and strength after my fever." 
Then he asks his correspondent to direct let- 
ters to New Orleans, Louisiana. "I shall have 
to go there," he writes, "for a boat to South 
America. I do not yet know to which point in 
South America I had better go." His hope to 
find there a boat for South America explains 
an otherwise mystifying letter in which he re- 
quested his brother David to send him a cer- 
tain sum of money by American Express order 
to New Orleans. As a matter of fact he did not 
[ xxi ] 



Introduction 

go into Louisiana at all, either because he 
learned that no south-bound ship was avail- 
able at the mouth of the Mississippi, or because 
the unexpected appearance of the Island Belle 
in the harbor of Cedar Keys caused him to 
change his plans* 

In later years Mr. Muir himself strongly 
disparaged the wisdom of his plans with respect 
to South America, as may be seen in the chap- 
ter that deals with his Cuban sojourn. The 
judgment there expressed was lead-penciled 
into his journal during a reading of it long after- 
wards. Nevertheless the Andes and the South 
American forests continued to fascinate his 
imagination, as his letters show, for many years 
after he came to California. When the long de- 
ferred journey to South America was finally 
made in 191 1, forty-four years after the first 
attempt, he whimsically spoke of it as the ful- 
fillment of those youthful dreams that moved 
him to undertake his thousand-mile walk to 
the Gulf. 

Mr. Muir always recalled with gratitude the 
[ xxii ] 



Introduction 

Florida friends who nursed him through his 
long and serious illness. In 1898, while travel- 
ing through the South on a forest-inspection 
tour with his friend Charles Sprague Sargent, 
he took occasion to revisit the scenes of his early- 
adventures. It may be of interest to quote 
some sentences from letters written at that 
time to his wife and to his sister Sarah. "I 
have been down the east side of the Florida 
peninsula along the Indian River/' he writes, 
*' through the palm and pine forests to Miami, 
and thence to Key West and the southmost 
keys stretching out towards Cuba. Returning, 
I crossed over to the west coast by Palatka to 
Cedar Keys, on my old track made thirty-one 
years ago, in search of the Hodgsons who 
nursed me through my long attack of fever. 
Mr. Hodgson died long ago, also the eldest 
son, with whom I used to go boating among 
the keys while slowly convalescing." 

He then tells how he found Mrs. Hodgson 
and the rest of the family at Archer. They had 
long thought him dead and were naturally very 
[ xxiii ] 



Introduction 

much surprised to see him. Mrs. Hodgson was 
in her garden and he recognized her, though 
the years had ahered her appearance. Let us 
give his own account of the meeting: "I asked 
her if she knew me. 'No, I don't,' she said; 
*tell me your name.' 'Muir,' I repHed. 'John 
Muir? My California John Muir?' she almost 
screamed. I said, 'Yes, John Muir; and you 
know I promised to return and visit you in 
about twenty-five years, and though I am a 
little late — six or seven years — I've done 
the best I could.' The eldest boy and girl re-- 
membered the stories I told them, and when 
they read about the Muir Glacier they felt sure 
it must have been named for me. I stopped at 
Archer about four hours, and the way we talked 
over old times you may imagine." From Sa- 
vannah, on the same trip, he wrote: "Here is 
where I spent a hungry, weary, yet happy week 
camping in Bonaventure graveyard thirty-one 
years ago. Many changes, I am told, have 
been made in its graves and avenues of late, and 
how many in my life!" 

[ xxiv ] 



Introduction 

In perusing this journal the reader will miss 
the literary finish which Mr. Muir was accus- 
tomed to give to his later writings. This fact 
calls for no excuse. Not only are we dealing 
here with the earliest product of his pen, but 
with impressions and observations written down 
hastily during pauses in his long march. He ap- 
parently intended to use this raw material at 
some time for another book. If the record, as 
it stands, lacks finish and adornment, it also 
possesses the immediacy and the freshness of 
first impressions. 

The sources which I have used in preparing 
this volume are threefold: (i) the original jour- 
nal, of which the first half contained many in- 
terlinear revisions and expansions, and a con- 
siderable number of rough pencil sketches of 
plants, trees, scenery, and notable adventures; 
(2) a wide-spaced, typewritten, rough copy of 
the journal, apparently in large part dictated 
to a stenographer; it is only slightly revised, 
and comparison with the original journal shows 
many significant omissions and additions; (3) 
[ xzv ] 



Introduction 

two separate elaborations of his experiences in 
Savannah when he camped there for a week 
in the Bonaventure graveyard. Throughout 
my work upon the primary and secondary 
materials I was impressed with the scrupu- 
lous fidelity with which he adhered to the 
facts and impressions set down in the original 
journal. 

Readers of Muir's writings need scarcely be 
told that this book, autobiographically, bridges 
the period between The Story of my Boyhood 
and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra, 
However, one span of the bridge was lacking, 
for the journal ends with Mr. Muir's arrival 
in San Francisco about the first of April, 1868, 
while his first summer in the Sierra was that of 
1869. By excerpting from a letter a summary 
account of his first visit to Yosemite, and in- 
cluding a description of Twenty Hill Hollow, 
where he spent a large part of his first year in 
California, the connection is made complete. 
The last chapter was first published as an ar- 
ticle in the Overland Monthly of July, 1872. 
[ xxvi J 



Introduction 

A revised copy of the printed article, found 
among Muir's literary effects, has been made 
the basis of the chapter on Twenty Hill Hol- 
low as it appears in this volume. 

William Frederic Bade 



A Thousand' Mile Walk 
to the Gulf 

CHAPTER I 

KENTUCKY FORESTS AND CAVES 

I HAD long been looking from the wild woods 
and gardens of the Northern States to those 
of the warm South, and at last, all draw- 
backs overcome, I set forth [from Indianapo- 
lis] on the first day of September, 1867, joyful 
and free, on a thousand-mile walk to the Gulf 
of Mexico. [The trip to Jeffersonville, on the 
banks of the Ohio, was made by rail.] Crossing 
the Ohio at Louisville [September 2], I steered 
through the big city by compass without speak- 
ing a word to any one. Beyond the city I found 
a road running southward, and after passing a 
scatterment of suburban cabins and cottages I 
reached the green woods and spread out my 
pocket map to rough-hew a plan for my journey. 
My plan was simply to push on in a general 
I I ] 



A I'housand-Mile Walk 

southward direction by the wildest, leafiest, 
and least trodden way I could find, promising 
the greatest extent of virgin forest. Folding my 
map, I shouldered my little bag and plant 
press and strode away among the old Ken- 
tucky oaks, rejoicing in splendid visions of 
pines and palms and tropic flowers in glorious 
array, not, however, without a few cold shad- 
ows of loneliness, although the great oaks 
seemed to spread their arms in welcome. 

I have seen oaks of many species in many 
kinds of exposure and soil, but those of Kentucky 
excel in grandeur all I had ever before beheld. 
They are broad and dense and bright green. In 
the leafy bowers and caves of their long branches 
dwell magnificent avenues of shade, and every 
tree seems to be blessed with a double portion 
of strong exulting life. Walked twenty miles, 
mostly on river bottom, and found shelter in 
a rickety tavern. 

September j. Escaped from the dust and 
squalor of my garret bedroom to the glorious 
forest. All the streams that I tasted hereabouts 

[2] 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

are salty and so are the wells. Salt River was 
nearly dry. Much of my way this forenoon was 
over naked limestone. After passing the level 
ground that extended twenty-five or thirty 
miles from the river I came to a region of roll- 
ing hills called Kentucky Knobs — hills of de- 
nudation, covered with trees to the top. Some 
of them have a few pines. For a few hours I 
followed the farmers' paths, but soon wan- 
dered away from roads and encountered many 
a tribe of twisted vines difficult to pass. 

Emerging about noon from a grove of giant 
sunflowers, I found myself on the brink of a 
tumbling rocky stream [Rolling Fork]. I did 
not expect to find bridges on my wild ways, 
and at once started to ford, when a negro 
woman on the opposite bank earnestly called 
on me to wait until she could tell the "men 
folks" to bring me a horse — that the river 
was too deep and rapid to wade and that I 
would "sartain be drowned" if I attempted to 
cross. I replied that my bag and plants would 
ballast me; that the water did not appear to be 
[3] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

deep, and that if I were carried away, I was a 
good swimmer and would soon dry in the sun- 
shine. But the cautious old soul replied that no 
one ever waded that river and set off for a horse, 
saying that it was no trouble at all. 

In a few minutes the ferry horse came gin- 
gerly down the bank through vines and weeds. 
His long stilt legs proved him a natural wader. 
He was white and the little sable negro boy that 
rode him looked like a bug on his back. After 
many a tottering halt the outward voyage was 
safely made, and I mounted behind little Nig. 
He was a queer specimen, puffy and jet as an 
India rubber doll and his hair was matted in sec- 
tions like the wool of a merino sheep. The old 
horse, overladen with his black and white bur- 
den, rocked and stumbled on his stilt legs with 
fair promises of a fall. But all ducking signs 
failed and we arrived in safety among the weeds 
and vines of the rugged bank. A salt bath 
would have done us no harm. I could swim and 
little Afric looked as if he might float like a 
bladder. 

[4l 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

I called at the homestead where my ferry- 
man informed me I would find " tollable " water. 
But, like all the water of this section that I 
have tasted, it was intolerable with salt. Every- 
thing about this old Kentucky home bespoke 
plenty, unpolished and unmeasured. The house 
was built in true Southern style, airy, large, 
and with a transverse central hall that looks 
like a railway tunnel, and heavy rough out- 
side chimneys. The negro quarters and other 
buildings are* enough in number for a village, 
altogether an interesting representative of a 
genuine old Kentucky home, embosomed in 
orchards, corn fields and green wooded hills. 

Passed gangs of woodmen engaged in fell- 
ing and hewing the grand oaks for market. 
Fruit very abundant. Magnificent flowing hill 
scenery all afternoon. Walked southeast from 
Elizabethtown till wearied and lay down in the 
bushes by guess. 

September 4, The sun was gilding the hill- 
tops when I was awakened by the alarm notes 
of birds whose dwelling in a hazel thicket I had 
[5] 



A nousand-Mile IValk 

disturbed. They flitted excitedly close to my 
head, as if scolding or asking angry questions, 
while several beautiful plants, strangers to me, 
were looking me full in the face. The first bo- 
tanical discovery in bed ! This was one of the 
most delightful camp grounds, though groped 
for in the dark, and I lingered about it enjoying 
its trees and soft lights and music. 

Walked ten miles of forest. Met a strange 
oak with willow-looking leaves. Entered a 
sandy stretch of black oak called "Barrens," 
many of which were sixty or seventy feet in 
height, and are said to have grown since the 
fires were kept off, forty years ago. The farm- 
ers hereabouts are tall, stout, happy fellows, 
fond of guns and horses. Enjoyed friendly 
chats with them. Arrived at dark in a village 
that seemed to be drawing its last breath. Was 
guided to the "tavern" by a negro who was ex- 
tremely accommodating. " No trouble at all," 
he said. 

September 5. No bird or flower or friendly 
tree above me this morning; only squalid garret 
[6] 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

rubbish and dust. Escaped to the woods. Came 
to the region of caves. At the mouth of the first 
I discovered, I was surprised to find ferns which 
belonged to the coolest nooks of Wisconsin and 
northward, but soon observed that each cave 
rim has a zone of climate peculiar to itself, and 
it is always cool. This cave had an opening 
about ten feet in diameter, and twenty-five 
feet perpendicular depth. A strong cold wind 
issued from it and I could hear the sounds of 
running water. A long pole was set against its 
walls as if intended for a ladder, but in some 
places it was slippery and smooth as a mast and 
would test the climbing powers of a monkey. 
The walls and rim of this natural reservoir were 
finely carved and flowered. Bushes leaned over 
it with shading leaves, and beautiful ferns and 
mosses were in rows and sheets on its slopes 
and shelves. Lingered here a long happy while, 
pressing specimens and printing this beauty 
into memory. 

Arrived about noon at Munfordville ; was 
soon discovered and examined by Mr. Mun- 
(71 



A T'housand-Mile Walk 

ford himself, a pioneer and father of the village. 
He is a surveyor — has held all country offices, 
and every seeker of roads and lands applies to 
him for information. He regards all the vil- 
lagers as his children, and all strangers who en- 
ter Munfordville as his own visitors. Of course 
he inquired my business, destination, et cetera, 
and invited me to his house. 

After refreshing me with "parrs" he compla- 
cently covered the table with bits of rocks, 
plants, et cetera, things new and old which he 
had gathered in his surveying walks and sup- 
posed to be full of scientific interest. He in- 
formed me that all scientific men applied to him 
for information, and as I was a botanist, he 
either possessed, or ought to possess, the knowl- 
edge I was seeking, and so I received long 
lessons concerning roots and herbs for every 
mortal ill. Thanking my benefactor for his 
kindness, I escaped to the fields and followed a 
railroad along the base of a grand hill ridge. As 
evening came on all the dwellings I found seemed 
to repel me, and I could not muster courage 
[8] 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

enough to ask entertainment at any of them. 
Took refuge in a log schoolhouse that stood on 
a hillside beneath stately oaks and slept on the 
softest looking of the benches. 

September (5. Started at the earliest bird song 
in hopes of seeing the great Mammoth Cave 
before evening. Overtook an old negro driving 
an ox team. Rode with him a few miles and 
had some interesting chat concerning war, wild 
fruits of the woods, et cetera. "Right heah," 
said he, "is where the Rebs was a-tearin' up the 
track, and they all a sudden thought they seed 
the Yankees a-comin', obah dem big hills dar, 
and Lo'd, how dey run." I asked him if he 
would like a renewal of these sad war times, 
when his flexible face suddenly calmed, and he 
said with intense earnestness, "Oh, Lo'd, want 
no mo wa, Lo'd no." Many of these Kentucky 
negroes are shrewd and intelligent, and when 
warmed upon a subject that interests them, are 
eloquent in no mean degree. 

Arrived at Horse Cave, about ten miles from 
the great cave. The entrance is by a long easy 
[9] 



A I'housand'Mile Walk 

slope of several hundred yards. It seems like 
a noble gateway to the birthplace of springs 
and fountains and the dark treasuries of the 
mineral kingdom. This cave is in a village 
[of the same name] which it supplies with an 
abundance of cold water, and cold air that 
issues from its fern-clad lips. In hot weather 
crowds of people sit about it in the shade of 
the trees that guard it. This magnificent fan 
is capable of cooling everybody in the town at 
once. 

Those who live near lofty mountains may 
climb to cool weather in a day or two, but the 
overheated Kentuckians can find a patch of cool 
climate in almost every glen in the State. The 
villager who accompanied me said that Horse 
Cave had never been fully explored, but that it 
was several miles in length at least. He told me 
that he had never been at Mammoth Cave — 
that it was not worth going ten miles to see, as 
it was nothing but a hole in the ground, and I 
found that his was no rare case. He was one 
of the useful, practical men — too wise to waste 

[ 10 ] 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

precious time with weeds, caves, fossils, or any- 
thing else that he could not eat. 

Arrived at the great Mammoth Cave. I was 
surprised to find it in so complete naturalness. 
A large hotel with fine walks and gardens is 
near it. But fortunately the cave has been un- 
improved, and were it not for the narrow trail 
that leads down the glen to its door, one would 
not know that it had been visited. There are 
house-rooms and halls whose entrances give 
but slight hint of their grandeur. And so also 
this magnificent hall in the mineral kingdom of 
Kentucky has a door comparatively small and 
unpromising. One might pass within a few 
yards of it without noticing it. A strong cool 
breeze issues constantly from it, creating a 
northern climate for the ferns that adorn its 
rocky front. 

I never before saw Nature's grandeur in so 
abrupt contrast with paltry artificial gardens. 
The fashionable hotel grounds are in exact 
parlor taste, with many a beautiful plant cul- 
tivated to deformity, and arranged in strict 
[II ] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

geometrical beds, the whole pretty affair a 
laborious failure side by side with Divine 
beauty. The trees around the mouth of the 
cave are smooth and tall and bent forward 
at the bottom, then straight upwards. Only 
a butternut seems, by its angular knotty 
branches, to sympathize with and belong to 
the cave, with a fine growth of Cystopteris 
and Hypnum. 

Started for Glasgow Junction. Got belated 
in the hill woods. Inquired my way at a farm- 
house and was invited to stay overnight in a 
rare, hearty, hospitable manner. Engaged in 
familiar running talk on politics, war times, and 
theology. The old Kentuckian seemed to take 
a liking to me and advised me to stay in these 
hills until next spring, assuring me that I would 
find much to interest me in and about the Great 
Cave; also, that he was one of the school offi- 
cials and was sure that I could obtain their 
school for the winter term. I sincerely thanked 
him for his kind plans, but pursued my own. 

September 7. Left the hospitable Kentuck- 
[ 12] 




ENTRANCE TO MAMMOTH CAVE 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

lans with their sincere good wishes and bore 
away southward again through the deep green 
woods. In noble forests all day. Saw mistletoe 
for the first time. Part of the day I traveled 
with a Kentuckian from near Burkesville. He 
spoke to all the negroes he met with familiar 
kindly greetings, addressing them always as 
''Uncles'' and "Aunts." All travelers one meets 
on these roads, white and black, male and 
female, travel on horseback. Glasgow is one 
of the few Southern towns that shows ordinary 
American life. At night with a well-to-do 
farmer. 

September 8. Deep, green, bossy sea of wav- 
ing, flowing hilltops. Com and cotton and to- 
bacco fields scattered here and there. I had 
imagined that a cotton field in flower was 
something magnificent. But cotton is a coarse, 
rough, straggling, unhappy looking plant, not 
half as good-looking as a field of Irish potatoes. 
Met a great many negroes going to meeting, 
dressed in their Sunday best. Fat, happy look- 
ing, and contented. The scenery on approaching 
[ 13 ] 



A nousand-Mile Walk 

the Cumberland River becomes still grander. 
Burkesville, in beautiful location, is embosomed 
in a glorious array of verdant flowing hills. The 
Cumberland must be a happy stream. I think 
I could enjoy traveling with it in the midst of 
such beauty all my life. This evening I could 
find none willing to take me in, and so lay down 
on a hillside and fell asleep muttering praises 
to the happy abounding beauty of Kentucky. 

September p. Another day in the most fa- 
vored province of bird and flower. Many rapid 
streams, flowing in beautiful flower-bordered 
caiions embosomed in dense woods. Am seated 
on a grand hill-slope that leans back against 
the sky like a picture. Amid the wide waves 
of green wood there are spots of autumnal 
yellow and the atmosphere, too, has the dawn- 
ings of autumn in colors and sounds. The soft 
light of morning falls upon ripening forests of 
oak and elm, walnut and hickory, and all Na- 
ture is thoughtful and calm. Kentucky is the 
greenest, leafiest State I have yet seen. The 
sea of soft temperate plant-green is deepest here. 
[ 14] 



Kentucky Forests and Caves 

Comparing volumes of vegetable verdure in 
different countries to a wedge, the thick end 
would be in the forests of Kentucky, the other 
in the lichens and mosses of the North. This 
verdure wedge would not be perfect in its lines. 
From Kentucky it would maintain its thickness 
long and well in passing the level forests of 
Indiana and Canada. From the maples and 
pines of Canada it would slope rapidly to the 
bleak Arctic hills with dwarf birches and alders ; 
thence it would thin out in a long edge among 
hardy lichens and liverworts and mosses to 
the dwelling-places of everlasting frost. Far the 
grandest of all Kentucky plants are her noble 
oaks. They are the master existences of her 
exuberant forests. Here is the Eden, the para- 
dise of oaks. Passed the Kentucky line towards 
evening and obtained food and shelter from a 
thrifty Tennessee farmer, after he had made 
use of all the ordinary anti-hospitable argu- 
ments of cautious comfortable families. 

September lo. Escaped from a heap of un- 
cordial kindness to the generous bosom of the 
[ 15] 



A "Thousand-Mile TValk 

woods. After a few miles of level ground in 
luxuriant tangles of brooding vines, I began the 
ascent of the Cumberland Mountains, the first 
real mountains that my foot ever touched or 
eyes beheld. The ascent was by a nearly regu- 
lar zigzag slope, mostly covered up like a tun- 
nel by overarching oaks. But there were a few 
openings where the glorious forest road of Ken- 
tucky was grandly seen, stretching over hill 
and valley, adjusted to every slope and curve 
by the hands of Nature — the most sublime 
and comprehensive picture that ever entered 
my eyes. Reached the summit in six or seven 
hours — a strangely long period of up-grade 
work to one accustomed only to the hillocky 
levels of Wisconsin and adjacent States. 



CHAPTER II 

CROSSING THE CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS 

I HAD climbed but a short distance when 
I was overtaken by a young man on horse- 
back, who soon showed that he intended to 
rob me if he should find the job worth while. 
After he had inquired where I came from, and 
where I was going, he offered to carry my bag. 
I told him that it was so light that I did not 
feel it at all a burden ; but he insisted and coaxed 
until I allowed him to carry it. As soon as he 
had gained possession I noticed that he gradu- 
ally increased his speed, evidently trying to get 
far enough ahead of me to examine the con- 
tents without being observed. But I was too 
good a walker and runner for him to get far. 
At a turn of the road, after trotting his horse 
for about half an hour, and when he thought he 
was out of sight, I caught him rummaging my 
poor bag. Finding there only a comb, brush, 
towel, soap, a change of underclothing, a copy 
[ 17] 



A "Thousand-Mile JValk 

of Burns's poems, Milton's Paradise Lost, and 
a small New Testament, he waited for me, 
handed back my bag, and returned down the 
hill, saying that he had forgotten something. 

I found splendid growths of shining-leaved 
Ericacece [heathworts] for which the Alleghany 
Mountains are noted. Also ferns of which Os- 
munda cinnamomea [Cinnamon Fern] is the 
largest and perhaps the most abundant. Os- 
munda regalis [Flowering Fern] is also common 
here, but not large. In Wood's ^ and Gray's 
Botany Osmunda cinnamomea is said to be a 
much larger fern than Osmunda claytoniana. 
This I found to be true in Tennessee and 
southward, but in Indiana, part of Illinois, and 
Wisconsin the opposite is true. Found here 
the beautiful, sensitive Schrankia, or sensitive 
brier. It is a long, prickly, leguminous vine, 
with dense heads of small, yellow fragrant 
flowers. 

^ Alphonso Wood, Class-bhok of Botany^ with a Flora of 
the United States and Canada. The copy of this work, carried 
by Mr. Muir on his wanderings, is still extant. The edition 
is that of 1862. 

[ 18] 



"The Cumberland Mountains 

Vines growing on roadsides receive many a 
tormenting blow, simply because they give evi- 
dence of feeling. Sensitive people are served 
in the same way. But the roadside vine soon 
becomes less sensitive, like people getting used 
to teasing — Nature, in this instance, making for 
the comfort of flower creatures the same benev- 
olent arrangement as for man. Thus I found 
that the Schrankia vines growing along foot- 
paths leading to a backwoods schoolhouse were 
much less sensitive than those in the adjacent 
unfrequented woods, having learned to pay but 
slight attention to the tingling strokes they 
get from teasing scholars. 

It is startling to see the pairs of pinnate 
leaves rising quickly out of the grass and fold- 
ing themselves close in regular succession from 
the root to the end of the prostrate stems, ten 
to twenty feet in length. How little we know as 
yet of the life of plants — their hopes and fears, 
pains and enjoyments! 

Traveled a few miles with an old Tennessee 
farmer who was much excited on account of the 
[ 19] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

news he had just heard. "Three kingdoms, 
England, Ireland, and Russia, have declared 
war agin the United States. Oh, it's terrible, 
terrible," said he. "This big war comin' so 
quick, after our own big fight. Well, it can't be 
helped, and all I have to say is, Amerricay for- 
ever, but I'd a heap rather they did n't fight." 

"But are you sure the news is true?" I in- 
quired. "Oh, yes, quite sure," he replied, "for 
me and some of my neighbors were down at the 
store last night, and Jim Smith can read, and 
he found out all about it in a newspaper." 

Passed the poor, rickety, thrice-dead village 
of Jamestown, an incredibly dreary place. 
Toward the top of the Cumberland grade, about 
two hours before sundown I came to a log house, 
and as I had been warned that all the broad 
plateau of the range for forty or fifty miles was 
desolate, I began thus early to seek a lodging 
for the night. Knocking at the door, a motherly 
old lady replied to my request for supper and 
bed and breakfast, that I was welcome to the 
best she had, provided that I had the necessary 

[ 20] 













■^ _.J^-^ :.?'- ^.. .. -■- -- ^^.^:^,-r—.-^:.^^. ^ ^^ 



IfTS 




"The Cumberland Mountains 

change to pay my bill. When I told her that un- 
fortunately I had nothing smaller than a five- 
dollar greenback, she said, "Well, I'm sorry, 
but cannot afford to keep you. Not long ago 
ten soldiers came across from North Carolina, 
and in the morning they offered a greenback 
that I could n't change, and so I got nothing for 
keeping them, which I was ill able to afford." 
"Very well," I said, "I'm glad you spoke of 
this beforehand, for I would rather go hungry 
than impose on your hospitality." 

As I turned to leave, after bidding her good- 
bye, she, evidently pitying me for my tired 
looks, called me back and asked me if I would 
like a drink of milk. This I gladly accepted, 
thinking that perhaps I might not be success- 
ful in getting any other nourishment for a day 
or two. Then I inquired whether there were any 
more houses on the road, nearer than North 
Carolina, forty or fifty miles away. "Yes," 
she said, "it's only two miles to the next 
house, but beyond that there are no houses 
that I know of except empty ones whose own- 

[21 ] 



A "Thousand- Mile TValk 

ers have been killed or driven away during the 



war." 



Arriving at the last house, my knock at the 
door was answered by a bright, good-natured, 
good-looking little woman, who in reply to my 
request for a night's lodging and food, said, "Oh, 
I guess so. I think you can stay. Come in and 
I'll call my husband." *'But I must first warn 
you," I said, "that I have nothing smaller to 
offer you than a five-dollar bill for my enter- 
tainment. I don't want you to think that I am 
trying to impose on your hospitality." 

She then called her husband, a blacksmith, 
who was at work at his forge. He came out, 
hammer in hand, bare-breasted, sweaty, be- 
grimed, and covered with shaggy black hair. 
In reply to his wife's statement, that this young 
man wished to stop over night, he quickly re- 
plied, "That's all right; tell him to go into the 
house." He was turning to go back to his shop, 
when his wife added, " But he says he has n't 
any change to pay. He has nothing smaller 
than a five-dollar bill." Hesitating only a mo- 

[22] 



The Cumberland Mountains 

ment, he turned on his heel and said, "Tell him 
to go into the house. A man that comes right 
out like that beforehand is welcome to eat my 
bread." 

__^When he came in after his hard day's work 
and sat down to dinner, he solemnly asked a 
blessing on the frugal meal, consisting solely of 
com bread and bacon. Then, looking across the 
table at me, he said, "Young man, what are 
you doing down here?" I replied that I was 
looking at plants. "Plants.? What kind of 
plants?" I said, "Oh, all kinds; grass, weeds, 
flowers, trees, mosses, ferns, — almost every- 
thing that grows is interesting to me." 

"Well, young man," he queried, "you mean 
to say that you are not employed by the Gov- 
ernment on some private business?" "No," I 
said, "I am not employed by any one except 
just myself. I love all kinds of plants, and I 
came down here to these Southern States to get 
acquainted with as many of them as possible." 
^ "You look like a strong-minded man," he re- 
plied, "and surely you are able to do something 
[23 1 



A Thousand'Mik Walk 

better than wander over the country and look 
at weeds and blossoms. These are hard times, 
and real work is required of every man that is 
able. Picking up blossoms does n't seem to be 
a man's work at all in any kind of times." 

To this I replied, "You are a believer in the 
Bible, are you not?" "Oh, yes." "Well, you 
know Solomon was a strong-minded man, and 
he is generally believed to have been the very 
wisest man the world ever saw, and yet he con- 
sidered it was worth while to study plants; 
not only to go and pick them up as I am doing, 
but to study them ; and you know we are told 
that he wrote a book about plants, not only of 
the great cedars of Lebanon, but of little bits of 
things growing in the cracks of the walls." ^ 

"Therefore, you see that Solomon differed 
very much more from you than from me in this 
matter. I '11 warrant you he had many a long 
ramble in the mountains of Judea, and had he 

^ The previously mentioned copy of Wood's Botany, used 
by John Mulr, quotes on the title page i Kings iv, 33: "He 
spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon even unto the 
hyssop that springeth out of the wall.'* 

[24] 



^he Cumberland Mountains 

been a Yankee he would likely have visited every 
weed in the land. And again, do you not remem- 
ber that Christ told his disciples to "consider 
the lilies how they grow/ and compared their 
beauty with Solomon in all his glory? Now, 
whose advice am I to take, yours or Christ's? 
Christ says, 'Consider the lilies/ You say, 
'Don't consider them. It is n't worth while for 
any strong-minded man/ " 

This evidently satisfied him, and he acknowl- 
edged that he had never thought of blossoms 
in that way before. He repeated again and 
again that I must be a very strong-minded man, 
and admitted that no doubt I was fully justified 
in picking up blossoms. He then told me that 
although the war was over, walking across the 
Cumberland Mountains still was far from safe 
on account of small bands of guerrillas who were 
in hiding along the roads, and earnestly entreated 
me to turn back and not to think of walking so 
far as the Gulf of Mexico until the country be- 
came quiet and orderly once more. 

I replied that I had no fear, that I had but 

[25] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

very little to lose, and that nobody was likely to 
think it worth while to rob me ; that, anyhow, 
I always had good luck. In the morning he 
repeated the warning and entreated me to turn 
back, which nejer for a moment interfered with 
my resolution to pursue my glorious walk. 

September ii. Long stretch of level sand- 
stone plateau, lightly furrowed and dimpled 
with shallow groove-like valleys and hills. ^ The 
trees are mostly oaks, planted wide apart like 
those in the Wisconsin woods. A good many 
pine trees here and there, forty to eighty feet 
high, and most of the ground is covered with 
showy flowers. Polygalas [milkworts], solida- 
goes [goldenrods], and asters were especially 
abundant. I came to a cool clear brook every 
half mile or so, the^banks planted with Os- 
munda regalisy Osmunda cinnamomea, and hand- 
some sedges. The few larger streams were 
fringed with laurels and azaleas. Large areas 
beneath the trees are covered with formidable 
green briers and brambles, armed with hooked 
claws, and almost impenetrable. Houses are 
[26] 



"The Cumberland Mountains 

far apart and uninhabited, orchards and fences 
in ruins — sad marks of war. 

About noon my road became dim and at 
last vanished among desolate fields. Lost and 
hungry, I knew my direction but could not keep 
it on account of the briers. My path was indeed 
strewn with flowers, but as thorny, also, as mor- 
tal ever trod. In trying to force a way through 
these cat-plants one is not simply clawed and 
pricked through all one's clothing, but caught 
and held fast. The toothed arching branches 
come down over and above you like cruel liv- 
ing arms, and the more you struggle the more 
desperately you are entangled, and your 
wounds deepened and multiplied. The South 
has plant fly-catchers. It also has plant man- 
catchers. 

After a great deal of defensive fighting and 
struggling I escaped to a road and a house, but 
failed to find food or shelter. Towards sun- 
down, as I was walking rapidly along a straight 
stretch in the road, I suddenly came in sight of 
ten mounted men riding abreast. They un- 
[27] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

doubtedly had seen me before I discovered 
them, for they had stopped their horses and 
were evidently watching me. I saw at once that 
it was useless to attempt to avoid them, for 
the ground thereabout was quite open. I knew 
that there was nothing for it but to face them 
fearlessly, without showing the slightest sus- 
picion of foul play. Therefore, without halting 
even for a moment, I advanced rapidly with 
long strides as though I intended to walk through 
the midst of them. When I got within a rod or 
so I looked up in their faces and smilingly bade 
them "Howdy." Stopping never an instant, I 
turned to one side and walked around them to 
get on the road again, and kept on without ven- 
turing to look back or to betray the slightest 
fear of being robbed. 

After I had gone about one hundred or one 
hundred and fifty yards, I ventured a quick 
glance back, without stopping, and saw in this 
flash of an eye that all the ten had turned their 
horses toward me and were evidently talking 
about me; supposedly, with reference to what 

[28] 



"The Cumberland Mountains 

my object* was, where I was going, and whether 
it would be worth while to rob me. They all 
were mounted on rather scrawny horses, and all 
wore long hair hanging down on their shoulders. 
Evidently they belonged to the most irreclaim- 
able of the guerrilla bands who, long accus- 
tomed to plunder, deplored the coming of peace. 
I was not followed, however, probably because 
the plants projecting from my plant press made 
them believe that I was a poor herb doctor, a 
common occupation^in these mountain regions. 
About dark I discovered, a little off the road, 
another house, inhabited by negroes, where I 
succeeded in obtaining a much needed meal 
of string beans, buttermilk, and corn bread. At 
the table I was seated in a bottomless chair, 
and as I became sore and heavy, I sank deeper 
and deeper, pressing my knees against my 
breast, and my mouth settled to the level of my 
plate. But wild hunger cares for none of these 
things, and my curiously compressed position 
prevented the too free indulgence of boisterous 
appetite. Of course, I was compelled to sleep 
[29] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

with the trees in the one great bedroom of the 
open night. 

September 12. Awoke drenched with moun- 
tain mist, which made a grand show, as it 
moved away before the hot sun. Passed Mont- 
gomery, a shabby village at the head of the 
east slope of the Cumberland Mountains. Ob- 
tained breakfast in a clean house and began the 
descent of the mountains. Obtained fine views 
of a wide, open country, and distant flanking 
ridges and spurs. Crossed a wide cool stream 
[Emory River], a branch of the Clinch River. 
There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than 
a mountain stream, and this is the first I ever 
saw. Its banks are luxuriantly peopled with 
rare and lovely flowers and overarching trees, 
making one of Nature's coolest and most hos- 
pitable places. Every tree, every flower, every 
ripple and eddy of this lovely stream seemed 
solemnly to feel the presence of the great Cre- 
ator. Lingered in this sanctuary a long time 
thanking the Lord with all my heart for his 
goodness in allowing me to enter and enjoy it. 
[30] 



T^he Cumberland Mountains 

Discovered two ferns, Dicksonia and a small 
matted polypod on trees, common farther 
South. Also a species of magnolia with very 
large leaves and scarlet conical fruit. Near this 
stream I spent some joyous time in a grand 
rock-dwelling full of mosses, birds, and flowers. 
Most heavenly place I ever entered. The long 
narrow valleys of the mountainside, all well 
watered and nobly adorned with oaks, magno- 
lias, laurels, azaleas, asters, ferns, Hypnum 
mosses, Madotheca [Scale-mosses], etc. Also 
towering clumps of beautiful hemlocks. The 
hemlock, judging from the common species of 
Canada, I regarded as the least noble of the 
conifers. But those of the eastern valleys of the 
Cumberland Mountains are as perfect in form 
and regal in port as the pines themselves. The 
latter abundant. Obtained fine glimpses from 
open places as I descended to the great valley 
between these mountains and the Unaka Moun- 
tains on the state line. Forded the Clinch, a 
beautiful clear stream, that knows many of the 
dearest mountain retreats that ever heard the 
[31 ] 



A "Thousand'Mile Walk 

music of running water. Reached Kingston 
before dark. Sent back my plant collections by 
express to my brother in Wisconsin. 

September 13, Walked all day across small 
parallel valleys that flute the surface of the one 
wide valley. These flutings appear to have 
been formed by lateral pressure, are fertile, and 
contain some fine forms, though the seal of war 
is on all things. The roads never seem to pro- 
ceed with any fixed purpose, but wander as if 
lost. In seeking the way to Philadelphia [in 
Loudon County, Tennessee], I was told by a 
buxom Tennessee "gal" that over the hills was 
much the nearer way, that she always went that 
way, and that surely I could travel it. 

I started over the flint-ridges, but soon 
reached a set of enchanted little valleys among 
which, no matter how or in what direction I 
traveled, I could not get a foot nearer to Phila- 
delphia. At last, consulting my map and com- 
pass, I neglected all directions and finally 
reached the house of a negro driver, with whom 
I put up for the night. Received a good deal of 
[32] 



T^he Cumberland Mountains 

knowledge which may be of use should I ever 
be a negro teamster. 

September 14. Philadelphia is a very filthy 
village in a beautiful situation. More or less of 
pine. Black oak most abundant. Polypodium 
hexagonopterum and Aspidium acrostichoides 
[Christmas Fern] most abundant of ferns and 
most generally distributed. Osmunda claytoni- 
ana rare, not in fruit, small. Dicksonia abun- 
dant, after leaving the Cumberland Mountains. 
Asplenium ebeneum [Ebony Spleenwort] quite 
common in Tennessee and many parts of Ken- 
tucky. Cystopteris [Bladder Fern], and Asplen- 
ium filix-fcemina not common through the same 
range. Pteris aquilina [Common Brake] abun- 
dant, but small. 

Walked through many a leafy valley, shady 
grove, and cool brooklet. Reached Madison- 
ville, a brisk village. Came in full view of the 
Unaka Mountains, a magnificent sight. Stayed 
over night with a pleasant young farmer. 

September 15, Most glorious billowy moun- 
tain scenery. Made many a halt at open places 
[ 33 ] 



A T'housand'Mile Walk 

to take breath and to admire. The road, in 
many places cut into the rock, goes winding 
about among the knobs and gorges. Dense 
growth of asters, liatris,^ and grapevines. 

Reached a house before night, and asked 
leave to stop. "Well, you're welcome to stop," 
said the mountaineer, "if you think you can 
live till morning on what I have to live on all 
the time." Found the old gentleman very com- 
municative. Was favored with long "bar" 
stories, deer hunts, etc., and in the morning 
was pressed to stay a day or two. 

September i6. "I will take you," said he, 
"to the highest ridge in the country, where 
you can see both ways. You will have a view 
of all the world on one side of the mountains 
and all creation on the other. Besides, you, 
who are traveling for curiosity and wonder, 

1 Wood's Botany, edition of 1862, furnishes the following 
interesting comment on Liatris odoratissima (Willd.), popu- 
larly known as Vanilla Plant or Deer's Tongue: "The fleshy 
leaves exhale a rich fragrance even for years after they are 
dry, and are therefore by the southern planters largely mixed 
with their cured tobacco, to impart its fragrance to that 
nauseous weed." 

l34l 



"The Cumberland Mountains 

ought to see our gold mines. I agreed to stay 
and went to the mines. Gold is found in small 
quantities throughout the AUeghanies, and 
many farmers work at mining a few weeks or 
months every year when their time is not more 
valuable for other pursuits. In this neighbor- 
hood miners are earning from half a dollar to 
two dollars a day. There are several large 
quartz mills not far from here. Common labor 
is worth ten dollars a month. 

September 17, Spent the day in botanizing, 
blacksmithing, and examining a grist mill. 
Grist mills, in the less settled parts of Tennes- 
see and North Carolina, are remarkably simple 
affairs. A small stone, that a man might carry 
under his arm, is fastened to the vertical shaft 
of a little home-made, boyish-looking, back- 
action water-wheel, which, with a hopper and 
a box to receive the meal, is the whole affair. 
The walls of the mill are of undressed poles cut 
from seedling trees and there is no floor, as 
lumber is dear. No dam is built. The water is 
conveyed along some hillside until sufficient 
[35] 



A l^housand'Mile Walk 

fall is obtained, a thing easily done in the 
mountains. 

On Sundays you may see wild, unshorn, un- 
combed men coming out of the woods, each 
with a bag of corn on his back. From a peck to 
a bushel is a common grist. They go to the mill 
along verdant footpaths, winding up and down 
over hill and valley, and crossing many a rho- 
dodendron glen. The flowers and shining leaves 
brush against their shoulders and knees, occa- 
sionally knocking off their coon-skin caps. The 
first arrived throws his corn into the hopper, 
turns on the water, and goes to the house. 
After chatting and smoking he returns to see 
if his grist is done. Should the stones run 
empty for an hour or two, it does no harm. 

This is a fair average in equipment and ca- 
pacity of a score of mills that I saw in Tennes- 
see. This one was built by John Vohn, who 
claimed that he could make it grind twenty 
bushels a day. But since it fell into other hands 
it can be made to grind only ten per day. All 
the machines of Kentucky and Tennessee are 
[36] 



l^he Cumberland Mountains 

far behind the age. There is scarce a trace of 
that restless spirit of speculation and inven- 
tion so characteristic of the North. But one 
way of doing things obtains here, as if laws had 
been passed making attempts at improvement 
a crime. Spinning and weaving are done in 
every one of these mountain cabins wher- 
ever the least pretensions are made to thrift 
and economy. The practice of these ancient 
arts they deem marks of advancement rather 
than of backwardness. "There's a place back 
heah/' said my worthy entertainer, "whar 
there's a mill-house, an' a store-house, an' a 
still-house, an' a spring-house, an' a blacksmith 
shop — all in the same yard! Cows too, an' 
heaps of big gals a-milkin' them." 

This is the most primitive country I have 
seen, primitive in everything. The remotest 
hidden parts of Wisconsin are far in advance of 
the mountain regions of Tennessee and North 
Carolina. But my host speaks of the "old- 
fashioned unenlightened times," like a phi- 
losopher in the best light of civilization. "I 
[37] 



A Thousand" Mile Walk 

believe in Providence," said he. "Our fathers 
came into these valleys, got the richest of them, 
and skimmed off the cream of the soil. The 
worn-out ground won't yield no roastin' ears 
now. But the Lord foresaw this state of af- 
fairs, and prepared something else for us. And 
what is it? Why He meant us to bust open 
these copper mines and gold mines, so that 
we may have money to buy the corn that we 
cannot raise." A most profound observation. 
September i8. Up the mountain on the state 
line. The scenery is far grander than any I 
ever before beheld. The view extends from the 
Cumberland Mountains on the north far into 
Georgia and North Carolina to the south, an 
area of about five thousand square miles. Such 
an ocean of wooded, waving, swelling moun- 
tain beauty and grandeur is not to be described. 
Countless forest-clad hills, side by side in rows 
and groups, seemed to be enjoying the rich 
sunshine and remaining motionless only be- 
cause they were so eagerly absorbing it. All 
were united by curves and slopes of inimitable 
[38] 



The Cumberland Mountains 

softness and beauty. Oh, these forest gardens 
of our Father! What perfection, what divin- 
ity, in their architecture! What simpHcity and 
mysterious complexity of detail! Who shall 
read the teaching of these sylvan pages, the 
glad brotherhood of rills that sing in the val- 
leys, and all the happy creatures that dwell in 
them under the tender keeping of a Father's 
care? 

September ig. Received another solemn warn- 
ing of dangers on my way through the moun- 
tains. Was told by my worthy entertainer of a 
wondrous gap in the mountains which he ad- 
vised me to see. "It is called Track Gap," said 
he, "from the great number of tracks in the 
rocks — bird tracks, bar tracks, boss tracks, 
men tracks, all in the solid rock as if it had been 
mud." Bidding farewell to my worthy moun- 
taineer and all his comfortable wonders, I pur- 
sued my way to the South. 

As I was leaving, he repeated the warnings of 
danger ahead, saying that there were a good 
many people living like wild beasts on whatever 
[39] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

they could steal, and that murders were some- 
times committed for four or five dollars, and 
even less. While stopping with him I noticed 
that a man came regularly after dark to the 
house for his supper. He was armed with a gun, 
a pistol, and a long knife. My host told me that 
this man was at feud with one of his neighbors, 
and that they were prepared to shoot one an- 
other at sight. That neither of them could do 
any regular work or sleep in the same place two 
nights in succession. That they visited houses 
only for food, and as soon as the one that I saw 
had got his supper he went out and slept in the 
woods, without of course making a fire. His 
enemy did the same. 

My entertainer told me that he was trying 
to make peace between these two men, because 
they both were good men, and if they would 
agree to stop their quarrel, they could then 
both go to work. Most of the food in this house 
was coffee without sugar, com bread, and some- 
times bacon. But the coffee was the greatest 
luxury which these people knew. The only way 
[40] 



"The Cumberland Mountains 

of obtaining it was by selling skins, or, in par- 
ticular, "sang," that is ginseng,^ which found 
a market in far-off China. 

My path all to-day led me along the leafy 
banks of the Hiwassee,^ a most impressive 
mountain river. Its channel is very rough, as 
it crosses the edges of upturned rock strata, 
some of them standing at right angles, or 
glancing off obliquely to right and left. Thus a 
multitude of short, resounding cataracts are 
produced, and the river is restrained from the 
headlong speed due to its volume and the in- 
clination of its bed. 

All the larger streams of uncultivated coun- 
tries are mysteriously charming and beautiful, 
whether flowing in mountains or through 
swamps and plains. Their channels are inter- 

^ Mulr's journal contains the following additional note: 
"M. County produces $5000 worth a year of ginseng root, 
valued at seventy cents a pound. Under the law it is not al- 
lowed to be gathered until the first of September." 

* In his journal Muir spells the name "Hiawassee," a 
form which occurs on many of the older maps. The name 
probably is derived from the Cherokee Indian " Ayuhwasi," 
a name applied to several of their former settlements. 

[41 ] 



A I'housand-Mik Walk 

estingly sculptured, far more so than the grand- 
est architectural works of man. The finest of 
the forests are usually found along their banks, 
and in the multitude of falls and rapids the wil- 
derness finds a voice. Such a river is the Hi- 
wassee, with its surface broken to a thousand 
sparkling gems, and its forest walls vine- 
draped and flowery as Eden. And how fine the 
songs it sings! 

In Murphy [North Carolina] I was hailed 
by the sheriff who could not determine by my 
colors and rigging to what country or craft I 
belonged. Since the war, every other stranger 
in these lonely parts is supposed to be a crimi- 
nal, and all are objects of curiosity or appre- 
hensive concern. After a few minutes' conver- 
sation with this chief man of Murphy I was 
pronounced harmless, and invited to his house, 
where for the first time since leaving home I 
found a house decked with flowers and vines, 
clean within and without, and stamped with 
the comforts of culture and refinement in all 
its arrangements. Striking contrast to the un- 
[42 J 



"The Cumberland Mountains 

couth transitionist establishments from the 
wigwams of savages to the clumsy but clean 
log castle of the thrifty pioneer. 

September 20, All day among the groves and 
gorges of Murphy with Mr. Beale. Was shown 
the site of Camp Butler where General Scott 
had his headquarters when he removed the 
Cherokee Indians to a new home in the West. 
Found a number of rare and strange plants on 
the rocky banks of the river Hiwassee. In the 
afternoon, from the summit of a commanding 
ridge, I obtained a magnificent view of blue, 
softly curved mountain scenery. Among the 
trees I saw Ilex [Holly] for the first time. Mr. 
Beale informed me that the paleness of most 
of the women in his neighborhood, and the 
mountains in general hereabouts, was caused 
chiefly by smoking and by what is called "dip- 
ping." I had never even heard of dipping. The 
term simply describes the application of snuff 
to the gum by means of a small swab. 

September 21. Most luxuriant forest. Many 
brooks running across the road. Blairsville 
[ 43 ] 



A T'housand'Mile Walk 

[Georgia], which I passed in the forenoon, 
seems a shapeless and insignificant village, but 
grandly encircled with banded hills. At night 
I was cordially received by a farmer whose 
wife, though smart and neat in her appearance, 
was an inveterate smoker. 

September 22. Hills becoming small, sparsely 
covered with soil. They are called " knob land " 
and are cultivated, or scratched, with a kind 
of one-tooth cultivator. Every rain robs them 
of their fertility, while the bottoms are of 
course correspondingly enriched. About noon 
I reached the last mountain summit on my 
way to the sea. It is called the Blue Ridge 
and before it lies a prospect very different 
from any I had passed, namely, a vast uniform 
expanse of dark pine woods, extending to the 
sea; an impressive view at any time and under 
any circumstances, but particularly so to one 
emerging from the mountains. 

Traveled in the wake of three poor but merry 
mountaineers — an old woman, a young woman, 
and a young man — who sat, leaned, and lay 
[44] 



The Cumberland Mountains 

in the box of a shackly wagon that seemed to 
be held together by spiritualism, and was kept 
in agitation by a very large and a very small 
mule. In going down hill the looseness of the 
harness and the joints of the wagon allowed the 
mules to back nearly out of sight beneath the 
box, and the three who occupied it were slid 
against the front boards in a heap over the 
mules' ears. Before they could unravel their 
limbs from this unmannerly and impolite dis- 
order, a new ridge in the road frequently tilted 
them with a swish and a bump against the 
back boards in a mixing that was still more 
grotesque. 

I expected to see man, women, and mules 
mingled in piebald ruin at the bottom of some 
rocky hollow, but they seemed to have full 
confidence in the back board and front board 
of the wagon-box. So they continued to slide 
comfortably up and down, from end to end, in 
slippery obedience to the law of gravitation, as 
the grades demanded. Where the jolting was 
moderate, they engaged in conversation on 
[45] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

love, marriage, and camp-meeting, according 
to the custom of the country. The old lady, 
through all the vicissitudes of the transporta- 
tion, held a bouquet of French marigolds. 

The hillsides hereabouts were bearing a fine 
harvest of asters. Reached Mount Yonah in 
the evening. Had a long conversation with an 
old Methodist slaveholder and mine owner. 
Was hospitably refreshed with a drink of fine 
cider. 



CHAPTER III 

THROUGH THE RIVER COUNTRY OF GEORGIA 

SEPTEMBER 23. Am now fairly out of 
the mountains. Thus far the climate has 
not changed in any marked degree, the 
decrease in latitude being balanced by the in- 
crease in altitude. These mountains are high- 
ways on which northern plants may extend 
their colonies southward. The plants of the 
North and of the South have many minor 
places of meeting along the way I have trav- 
eled; but it is here on the southern slope of 
the Alleghanies that the greatest number of 
hardy, enterprising representatives of the two 
climates are assembled. 

Passed the comfortable, finely shaded little 
town of Gainesville. The Chattahoochee River 
is richly embanked with massive, bossy, dark 
green water oaks, and wreathed with a dense 
growth of muscadine grapevines, whose ornate 
foliage, so well adapted to bank embroidery, 
[47I " 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

was enriched with other interweaving species of 
vines and brightly colored flowers. This is the 
first truly southern stream I have met. 

At night I reached the home of a young man 
with whom I had worked in Indiana, Mr. 
Prater. He was down here on a visit to his 
father and mother. This was a plain back- 
woods family, living out of sight among knobby 
timbered hillocks not far from the river. The 
evening was passed in mixed conversation on 
southern and northern generalities. 

September 24., Spent this day with Mr. Prater 
sailing on the Chattahoochee, feasting on 
grapes that had dropped from the overhanging 
vines. This remarkable species of wild grape 
has a stout stem, sometimes five or six inches 
in diameter, smooth bark and hard wood, quite 
unlike any other wild or cultivated grapevine 
that I have seen. The grapes are very large, 
some of them nearly an inch in diameter, 
globular and fine flavored. Usually there are 
but three or four berries in a cluster, and when 
mature they drop off instead of decaying on 
[48] 



River Country of Georgia 

the vine. Those which fall into the river are 
often found in large quantities in the eddies 
along the bank, where they are collected by 
men in boats and sometimes made into 
wine. I think another name for this grape is 
the Scuppernong,^ though called "muscadine" 
here. 

Besides sailing on the river, we had a long 
walk among the plant bowers and tangles of 
the Chattahoochee bottom lands. 

September 25. Bade good-bye to this friendly 
family. Mr. Prater accompanied me a short 
distance from the house and warned me over 
and over again to be on the outlook for rattle- 
snakes. They are now leaving the damp low- 
lands, he told me, so that the danger is much 
greater because they are on their travels. Thus 
warned, I set out for Savannah, but got lost 
in the vine-fenced hills and hollows of the river 

* The old Indian name for the southern species of fox- 
grape, Vitis rotundifolidy which Muir describes here. Wood's 
Botany listed it as Vitis vulpina L. and remarks "The va- 
riety called ^Scuppernong' is quite common in southern 
gardens." 

[49I 



A Thousand'MUe TValk 

bottom. Was unable to find the ford to which 
I had been directed by Mr. Prater. 

I then determined to push on southward 
regardless of roads and fords. After repeated 
failures I succeeded in finding a place on the 
river bank where I could force my way into the 
stream through the vine-tangles. I succeeded 
in crossing the river by wading and swimming, 
careless of wetting, knowing that I would soon 
dry in the hot sunshine. 

Out near the middle of the river I found 
great difficulty in resisting the rapid current. 
Though I braced myself with a stout stick, I 
was at length carried away in spite of all my 
efforts. But I succeeded in swimming to the 
shallows on the farther side, luckily caught 
hold of a rock, and after a rest swam and 
waded ashore. Dragging myself up the steep 
bank by the overhanging vines, I spread out 
myself, my paper money, and my plants to 
dry. 

Debated with myself whether to proceed 
down the river valley until I could buy a boat, 
[so] 



River Country of Georgia 

or lumber to make one, for a sail instead of 
a march through Georgia. I was intoxicated 
with the beauty of these glorious river banks, 
which I fancied might increase in grandeur as 
I approached the sea. But I finally concluded 
that such a pleasure sail would be less profit- 
able than a walk, and so sauntered on south- 
ward as soon as I was dry. Rattlesnakes 
abundant. Lodged at a farmhouse. Found a 
few tropical plants in the garden. 

Cotton is the principal crop hereabouts, and 
picking is now going on merrily. Only the lower 
bolls are now ripe. Those higher on the plants 
are green and unopened. Higher still, there are 
buds and flowers, some of which, if the plants 
be thrifty and the season favorable, will con- 
tinue to produce ripe bolls until January. 

The negroes are easy-going and merry, mak- 
ing a great deal of noise and doing little work. 
One energetic white man, working with a will, 
would easily pick as much cotton as half a 
dozen Sambos and Sallies. The forest here is 
almost entirely made up of dim-green, knotty, 
[51I 



A T'housand'Mile Walk 

sparsely planted pines. The soil is mostly white, 
fine-grained sand. 

September 26. Reached Athens in the after- 
noon, a remarkably beautiful and aristocratic 
town, containing many classic and magnificent 
mansions of wealthy planters, who formerly 
owned large negro-stocked plantations in the 
best cotton and sugar regions farther south. 
Unmistakable marks of culture and refinement, 
as well as wealth, were everywhere apparent. 
This is the most beautiful town I have seen on 
the journey, so far, and the only one in the 
South that I would like to revisit. 

The negroes here have been well trained and 
are extremely polite. When they come in sight 
of a white man on the road, off goes their 
hats, even at a distance of forty or fifty yards, 
and they walk bare-headed until he is out of 
sight. 

September 27. Long zigzag walk amid the 
old plantations, a few of which are still cul- 
tivated in the old way by the same negroes 
that worked them before the war, and who 
[52] 



River Country of Georgia 

still occupy their former "quarters." They are 
now paid seven to ten dollars a month. 

The weather is very hot on these sandy, 
lightly shaded, lowland levels. When very 
thirsty I discovered a beautiful spring in a 
sandstone basin overhung with shady bushes 
and vines, where I enjoyed to the utmost the 
blessing of pure cold water. Discovered here 
a fine southern fern, some new grasses, etc. 
Fancied that I might have been directed here 
by Providence, while fainting with thirst. It 
is not often hereabouts that the joys of cool 
water, cool shade, and rare plants are so de- 
lightfully combined. 

Witnessed the most gorgeous sunset I ever 
enjoyed in this bright world of light. The 
sunny South is indeed sunny. Was directed by 
a very civil negro to lodgings for the night. 
Daily bread hereabouts means sweet potatoes 
and rusty bacon. 

September 28, The water oak is abundant 
on stream banks and in damp hollows. Grasses 
are becoming tall and cane-like and do not 
[53 ] 



A "Thousand- Mile JValk 

cover the ground with their leaves as at the 
North. Strange plants are crowding about me 
now. Scarce a familiar face appears among all 
the flowers of the day's walk. 

September 2Q. To-day I met a magnificent 
grass, ten or twelve feet in stature, with a 
superb panicle of glossy purple flowers. Its 
leaves, too, are of princely mould and dimen- 
sions. Its home is in sunny meadows and along 
the wet borders of slow streams and swamps. 
It seems to be fully aware of its high rank, and 
waves with the grace and solemn majesty of 
a mountain pine. I wish I could place one of 
these regal plants among the grass settlements 
of our Western prairies. Surely every panicle 
would wave and bow in joyous allegiance and 
acknowledge their king. 

September 30, Between Thomson and Augusta 
I found many new and beautiful grasses, tall 
gerardias, liatris, club mosses, etc. Here, too, 
is the northern limit of the remarkable long- 
leafed pine, a tree from sixty to seventy feet 
in height, from twenty to thirty inches in 
[54] 




A SOUTHERN PINE 



River Country of Georgia 

diameter, with leaves ten to fifteen inches long, 
in dense radiant masses at the ends of the naked 
branches. The wood is strong, hard, and very 
resinous. It makes excellent ship spars, bridge 
timbers, and flooring. Much of it is shipped to 
the West India Islands, New York, and Gal- 
veston. 

The seedlings, five or six years old, are very 
striking objects to one from the North, con- 
sisting, as they do, of the straight, leafless 
stem, surmounted by a crown of deep green 
leaves, arching and spreading like a palm. 
Children fancy that they resemble brooms, and 
use them as such in their picnic play-houses. 
Pinus palustris is most abundant in Georgia 
and Florida. 

The sandy soil here is sparingly seamed with 
rolled quartz pebbles and clay. Denudation, go- 
ing on slowly, allows the thorough removal of 
these clay seams, leaving only the sand. Not- 
withstanding the sandiness of the soil, much of 
the surface of the country is covered with stand- 
ing water, which is easily accounted for by the 
[55] 



A Thousand' Mile Walk 

presence of the above-mentioned impermeable 
seams. 

Traveled to-day more than forty miles with- 
out dinner or supper. No family would re- 
ceive me, so I had to push on to Augusta. Went 
hungry to bed and awoke with a sore stomach 
— sore, I suppose, from its walls rubbing on 
each other without anything to grind. A negro 
kindly directed me to the best hotel, called, 
I think, the Planter's. Got a good bed for a 
dollar. 

October J. Found a cheap breakfast in a 
market-place; then set off along the Savan- 
nah River to Savannah. Splendid grasses and 
rich, dense, vine-clad forests. Muscadine grapes 
in cart-loads. Asters and solidagoes becoming 
scarce. Carices [sedges] quite rare. Leguminous 
plants abundant. A species of passion flower is 
common, reaching back into Tennessee. It is 
here called "apricot vine," has a superb flower, 
and the most delicious fruit I have ever eaten. 

The pomegranate is cultivated here. The 
fruit is about the size of an orange, has a thick, 
[56] 



River Country of Georgia 

tough skin, and when opened resembles a many- 
chambered box full of translucent purple 
candies. 

Toward evening I came to the country of one 
of the most striking of southern plants, the so- 
called "Long Moss" or Spanish Moss [Til- 
landsia], though it is a flowering plant and be- 
longs to the 'same family as the pineapple 
[Bromelworts]. The trees hereabouts have all 
their branches draped with it, producing a re- 
markable effect. 

Here, too, I found an impenetrable cypress 
swamp. This remarkable tree, called cypress, 
is a taxodium, grows large and high, and is 
remarkable for its flat crown. The whole forest 
seems almost level on the top, as if each tree 
had grown up against a ceiling, or had been 
rolled while growing. This taxodium is the 
only level-topped tree that I have seen. The 
branches, though spreading, are careful not to 
pass each other, and stop suddenly on reach- 
ing the general level, as if they had grown up 
against a ceiling. 

[57] 



A nousand-Mile TValk 

The groves and thickets of smaller trees are 
full of blooming evergreen vines. These vines 
are not arranged in separate groups, or in deli- 
cate wreaths, but in bossy walls and heavy, 
mound-like heaps and banks. Am made to feel 
that I am now in a strange land. I know hardly 
any of the plants, but few of the birds, and I 
am unable to see the country for the solemn, 
dark, mysterious cypress woods which cover 
everything. 

The winds are full of strange sounds, making 
one feel far from the people and plants and fruit- 
ful fields of home. Night is coming on and I am 
filled with indescribable loneliness. Felt fever- 
ish; bathed in a black, silent stream; nervously 
watchful for alligators. Obtained lodging in a 
planter's house among cotton fields. Although 
the family seemed to be pretty well-off, the 
only light in the house was bits of pitch-pine 
wood burned in the fireplace. 

October 2, In the low bottom forest of the 
Savannah River. Very busy with new speci- 
mens. Most exquisitely planned wrecks of 
[58] 




SPANISH MOSS {Tillandsia) 



River Country of Georgia 

Agrostis scahra [Rough Hair Grass]. Pines in 
glorious array with open, welcoming, approach- 
able plants. 

Met a young African with whom I had a long 
talk. Was amused with his eloquent narrative 
of coon hunting, alligators, and many super- 
stitions. He showed me a place where a rail- 
road train had run off the track, and assured 
me that the ghosts of the killed may be seen 
every dark night. 

Had a long walk after sundown. At last was 
received at the house of Dr. Perkins. Saw Cape 
Jasmine [Gardenia florida] in the garden. Heard 
long recitals of war happenings, discussion of 
the slave question, and Northern politics; a 
thoroughly characteristic Southern family, re- 
fined in manners and kind, but immovably 
prejudiced on everything connected with slav- 
ery. 

The family table was unlike any I ever saw 

before. It was circular, and the central part 

of it revolved. When any one wished to be 

helped, he placed his plate on the revolving 

[59l 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

part, which was whirled around to the host, 
and then whirled back with its new load. Thus 
every plate was revolved into place, without 
the assistance of any of the family. 

October j. In "pine barrens" most of the 
day. Low, level, sandy tracts ; the pines wide 
apart; the sunny spaces between full of beau- 
tiful abounding grasses, liatris, long, wand- 
like solidago, saw palmettos, etc., covering the 
ground in garden style. Here I sauntered in 
delightful freedom, meeting none of the cat- 
clawed vines, or shrubs, of the alluvial bot- 
toms. Dwarf live-oaks common. 

Toward evening I arrived at the home of Mr. 
Cameron, a wealthy planter, who had large 
bands of slaves at work in his cotton fields. 
They still call him "Massa." He tells me that 
labor costs him less now than it did before the 
emancipation of the negroes. When I arrived 
I found him busily engaged in scouring the rust 
off some cotton-gin saws which had been ly- 
ing for months at the bottom of his mill-pond 
to prevent Sherman's "bummers'' from des- 
[60] 



River Country of Georgia 

troying them. The most valuable parts of the 
grist-mill and cotton-press were hidden in 
the same way. "If Bill Sherman," he said, 
"should come down now without his army, 
he would never go back." 

When I asked him if he could give me food 
and lodging for the night he said, "No, no, we 
have no accommodations for travelers." I said, 
"But I am traveling as a botanist and either 
have to find lodgings when night overtakes me 
or lie outdoors, which I often have had to do in 
my long walk from Indiana. But you see that 
the country here is very swampy; if you will at 
least sell me a piece of bread, and give me a 
drink at your well, I shall have to look around 
for a dry spot to lie down on." 

Then, asking me a few questions, and nar- 
rowly examining me, he said, "Well, it is 
barely possible that we may find a place for 
you, and if you will come to the house I will 
ask my wife." Evidently he was cautious to get 
his wife's opinion of the kind of creature I was 
before committing himself to hospitaHty. He 
[6i ] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

halted me at the door and called out his wife, 
a fine-looking woman, who also questioned me 
narrowly as to my object in coming so far down 
through the South, so soon after the war. She 
said to her husband that she thought they could, 
perhaps, give me a place to sleep. 

After supper, as we sat by the fire talking 
on my favorite subject of botany, I described 
the country I had passed through, its botani- 
cal character, etc. Then, evidently, all doubt 
as to my being a decent man vanished, and 
they both said that they would n't for any- 
thing have turned me away; but I must excuse 
their caution, for perhaps fewer than one in a 
hundred, who passed through this unfrequented 
part of the country, were to be relied upon. 
"Only a short time ago we entertained a man 
who was well spoken and well dressed, and he 
vanished some time during the night with some 
valuable silverware.'* 

Mr. Cameron told me that when I arrived 
he tried me for a Mason, and finding that I was 
not a Mason he wondered still more that I 
[62] 



River Country of Georgia 

would venture into the country without being 
able to gain the assistance of brother Masons 
in these troublous times. 

"Young man," he said, after hearing my talks 
on botany, "I see that your hobby is botany. 
My hobby is e-lec-tricity. I believe that the 
time is coming, though we may not live to see 
it, when that mysterious power or force, used 
now only for telegraphy, will eventually supply 
the power for running railroad trains and 
steamships, for lighting, and, in a word, elec- 
tricity will do all the work of the world." 

Many times since then I have thought of 
the wonderfully correct vision of this Georgia 
planter, so far in advance of almost everybody 
else in the world. Already nearly all that he 
foresaw has been accomplished, and the use of 
electricity is being extended more and more 
every year. 

October 4, New plants constantly appearing. 
All day in dense, wet, dark, mysterious forest 
of flat-topped taxodiums. 

October 5. Saw the stately banana for the 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

first time, growing luxuriantly in the wayside 
gardens. At night with a very pleasant, in- 
telligent Savannah family, but as usual was 
admitted only after I had undergone a severe 
course of questioning. 

October 6, Immense swamps, still more com- 
pletely fenced and darkened, that are never 
ruffled with winds or scorched with drought. 
Many of them seem to be thoroughly aquatic. 

October 7. Impenetrable taxodium swamp, 
seemingly boundless. The silvery skeins of 
tillandsia becoming longer and more abun- 
dant. Passed the night with a very pleasant 
family of Georgians, after the usual questions 
and cross questions. 

October 8. Found the first woody compositcB, 
a most notable discovery. Took them to be 
such at a considerable distance. Almost all 
trees and shrubs are evergreens here with thick 
polished leaves. Magnolia grandiflora becoming 
common. A magnificent tree in fruit and foli- 
age as well as in flower. Near Savannah I found 
waste places covered with a dense growth of 
[64] 



River Country of Georgia 

woody leguminous plants, eight or ten feet 
high, with pinnate leaves and suspended 
rattling pods. 

Reached Savannah, but find no word from 
home, and the money that I had ordered to be 
sent by express from Portage [Wisconsin] by 
my brother had not yet arrived. Feel dreadfully 
lonesome and poor. Went to the meanest look- 
ing lodging-house that I could find, on account 
of its cheapness. 



CHAPTER IV 

CAMPING AMONG THE TOMBS 

OCTOBER p. After going again to the 
express office and post office, and wan- 
dering about the streets, I found a road 
which led me to the Bonaventure graveyard. 
If that burying-ground across the Sea of Gali- 
lee, mentioned in Scripture, was half as beau- 
tiful as Bonaventure, I do not wonder that a 
man should dwell among the tombs. It is only 
three or four miles from Savannah, and is 
reached by a smooth white shell road. 

There is but little to be seen on the way in 
land, water, or sky, that would lead one to hope 
for the glories of Bonaventure. The ragged 
desolate fields, on both sides of the road, are 
overrun with coarse rank weeds, and show 
scarce a trace of cultivation. But soon all is 
changed. Rickety log huts, broken fences, and 
the last patch of weedy rice-stubble are left 
behind. You come to beds of purple liatris and 
[66] 



Camping among the "Tombs 

living wild-wood trees. You hear the song of 
birds, cross a small stream, and are with Nature 
in the grand old forest graveyard, so beautiful 
that almost any sensible person would choose 
to dwell here with the dead rather than with 
the lazy, disorderly living. 

Part of the grounds was cultivated and 
planted with live-oak, about a hundred years . 
ago, by a wealthy gentleman who had his coun- 
try residence here. But much the greater part 
is undisturbed. Even those spots which are 
disordered by art. Nature is ever at work to 
reclaim, and to make them look as if the foot 
of man had never known them. Only a small 
plot of ground is occupied with graves and the 
old mansion is in ruins. 

The most conspicuous glory of Bonaventure 
is its noble avenue of live-oaks. They are the 
most magnificent planted trees I have ever 
seen, about fifty feet high and perhaps three 
or four feet in diameter, with broad spreading 
leafy heads. The main branches reach out 
horizontally until they come together over the 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

driveway, embowering it throughout its entire 
length, while each branch is adorned Hke a 
garden with ferns, flowers, grasses, and dwarf 
palmettos. 

But of all the plants of these curious tree- 
gardens the most striking and characteristic is 
the so-called Long Moss {Jillandsia usneoides), 
. It drapes all the branches from top to bottom, 
hanging in long silvery-gray skeins, reaching a 
length of not less than eight or ten feet, and 
when slowly waving in the wind they produce 
a solemn funereal effect singularly impressive. 
There are also thousands of smaller trees and 
clustered bushes, covered almost from sight in 
the glorious brightness of their own light. The 
place is half surrounded by the salt marshes 
and islands of the river, their reeds and sedges 
making a delightful fringe. Many bald eagles 
roost among the trees along the side of the 
marsh. Their screams are heard every morning, 
joined with the noise of crows and the songs of 
countless warblers, hidden deep in their dwell- 
ings of leafy bowers. Large flocks of butter- 
[ 68 1 



Camping among the Tombs 

flies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to be in 
a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness. 
The whole place seems like a center of life. The 
dead do not reign there alone. 

Bonaventure to me is one of the most impres- 
sive assemblages of animal and plant creatures 
I ever met. I was fresh from the Western 
prairies, the garden-like openings of Wisconsin, 
the beech and maple and oak woods of Indiana 
and Kentucky, the dark mysterious Savannah 
cypress forests; but never since I was allowed 
to walk the woods have I found so impressive 
a company of trees as the tillandsia-draped 
oaks of Bonaventure. 

I gazed awe-stricken as one new-arrived 
from another world. Bonaventure is called a 
graveyard, a town of the dead, but the few 
graves are powerless in such a depth of life. 
The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, 
the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm, un- 
disturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this 
place of graves as one of the Lord's most fa- 
vored abodes of life and light. 
[69J 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

On no subject are our ideas more warped and 
pitiable than on death. Instead of the sym- 
pathy, the friendly union, of life and death so 
apparent in Nature, we are taught that death 
is an accident, a deplorable punishment for 
the oldest sin, the arch-enemy of life, etc. 
Town children, especially, are steeped in this 
death orthodoxy, for the natural beauties of 
death are seldom seen or taught in towns. 

Of death among our own species, to say 
nothing of the thousand styles and modes of 
murder, our best memories, even among happy 
deaths, yield groans and tears, mingled with 
morbid exultation; burial companies, black in 
cloth and countenance; and, last of all, a black 
box burial in an ill-omened place, haunted by 
imaginary glooms and ghosts of every degree. 
Thus death becomes fearful, and the most 
notable and incredible thing heard around a 
death-bed is, "I fear not to die." 

But let children walk with Nature, let them 
see the beautiful blendings and communions of 
death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, 
[70] 



Camping among the "Tombs 

as taught in woods and meadows, plains and 
mountains and streams of our blessed star, and 
they will learn that death is stingless indeed, 
and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has 
no victory, for it never fights. All is divine 
harmony. 

Most of the few graves of Bonaventure are 
planted with flowers. There is generally a mag- 
nolia at the head, near the strictly erect marble, 
a rose-bush or two at the foot, and some violets 
and showy exotics along the sides or on the 
tops. All is enclosed by a black iron railing, 
composed of rigid bars that might have been 
spears or bludgeons from a battlefield in Pan- 
demonium. 

It is interesting to observe how assiduously 
Nature seeks to remedy these labored art blun- 
ders. She corrodes the iron and marble, and 
gradually levels the hill which is always heaped 
up, as if a sufficiently heavy quantity of clods 
could not be laid on the dead. Arching grasses 
come one by one ; seeds come flying on downy 
wings, silent as fate, to give life's dearest beauty 
[71 ] 



A Thousand' Mile Walk 

for the ashes of art; and strong evergreen arms 
laden with ferns and tillandsia drapery are 
spread over all — Life at work everywhere, 
obliterating all memory of the confusion of man. 

In Georgia many graves are covered with a 
common shingle roof, supported on four posts 
as the cover of a well, as if rain and sunshine 
were not regarded as blessings. Perhaps, in this 
hot and insalubrious climate, moisture and sun- 
heat are considered necessary evils to which 
they do not wish to expose their dead. 

The money package that I was expecting did 
not arrive until the following week. After stop- 
ping the first night at the cheap, disreputable- 
looking hotel, I had only about a dollar and a 
half left in my purse, and so was compelled to 
camp out to make it last in buying only bread. 
I went out of the noisy town to seek a sleeping- 
place that was not marshy. After gaining the 
outskirts of the town toward the sea, I found 
some low sand dunes, yellow with flowering soli- 
dagoes. 

I wandered wearily from dune to dune sink- 
[ 72 1 



Camping among the "Tombs 

ing ankle-deep in the sand, searching for a 
place to sleep beneath the tall flowers, free from 
insects and snakes, and above all from my fel- 
low man. But idle negroes were prowling about 
everywhere, and I was afraid. The wind had 
strange sounds, waving the heavy panicles 
over my head, and I feared sickness from ma- 
laria so prevalent here, when I suddenly thought 
of the graveyard. 

"There," thought I, "is an ideal place for 
a penniless wanderer. There no superstitious 
prowling mischief maker dares venture for fear 
of haunting ghosts, while for me there will be 
God's rest and peace. And then, if I am to be ex- 
posed to unhealthy vapors, I shall have capital 
compensation in seeing those grand oaks in 
the moonlight, with all the impressive and 
nameless influences of this lonely beautiful 
place." 

By this time it was near sunset, and I has- 
tened across the common to the road and set off 
for Bonaventure, delighted with my choice, and 
almost glad to find that necessity had furnished 

\n ] 



A "Thousand'Mik Walk 

me with so good an excuse for doing what I 
knew my mother would censure ; for she made 
me promise I would not lie out of doors if I 
could possibly avoid it. The sun was set ere 
I was past the negroes' huts and rice fields, 
and I arrived near the graves in the silent hour 
of the gloaming. 

I was very thirsty after walking so long in 
the muggy heat, a distance of three or four 
miles from the city, to get to this graveyard. 
A dull, sluggish, coffee-colored stream flows 
under the road just outside the graveyard gar- 
den park, from which I managed to get a drink 
after breaking a way down to the water through 
a dense fringe of bushes, daring the snakes and 
alligators in the dark. Thus refreshed I entered 
the weird and beautiful abode of the dead. 

All the avenue where I walked was in 
shadow, but an exposed tombstone frequently 
shone out in startling whiteness on either hand, 
and thickets of sparkleberry bushes gleamed 
like heaps of crystals. Not a breath of air moved 
the gray moss, and the great black arms of the 
[74] 



Camping among the "Tombs 

trees met overhead and covered the avenue. 
But the canopy was fissured by many a netted 
seam and leafy-edged opening, through which 
the moonhght sifted in auroral rays, broidering 
the blackness in silvery light. Though tired, 
I sauntered a while enchanted, then lay down 
under one of the great oaks. I found a little 
mound that served for a pillow, placed my 
plant press and bag beside me and rested fairly 
well, though somewhat disturbed by large 
prickly-footed beetles creeping across my hands 
and face, and by a lot of hungry stinging mo- 
squitoes. 

When I awoke, the sun was up and all Na- 
ture was rejoicing. Some birds had discovered 
me as an intruder, and were making a great 
ado in interesting language and gestures. I 
heard the screaming of the bald eagles, and of 
some strange waders in the rushes. I heard the 
hum of Savannah with the long jarring hallos 
of negroes far away. On rising I found that my 
head had been resting on a grave, and though 
my sleep had not been quite so sound as that 
[75] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

of the person below, I arose refreshed, and look- 
ing about me, the morning sunbeams pouring 
through the oaks and gardens dripping with 
dew, the beauty displayed was so glorious and 
exhilarating that hunger and care seemed only 
a dream. 

Eating a breakfast cracker or two and watch- 
ing for a few hours the beautiful light, birds, 
squirrels, and insects, I returned to Savannah, 
to find that my money package had not yet ar- 
rived. I then decided to go early to the grave- 
yard and make a nest with a roof to keep off 
the dew, as there was no way of finding out how 
long I might have to stay. I chose a hidden 
spot in a dense thicket of sparkleberry bushes, 
near the right bank of the Savannah River, 
where the bald eagles and a multitude of sing- 
ing birds roosted. It was so well hidden that 
I had to carefully fix its compass bearing in my 
mind from a mark I made on the side of the 
main avenue, that I might be able to find it at 
bedtime. 

I used four of the bushes as corner posts for 
[76] 



Camping among the "Tombs 

my little hut, which was about four or five feet 
long by about three or four in width, tied 
little branches across from forks in the bushes 
to support a roof of rushes, and spread a thick 
mattress of Long Moss over the floor for a bed. 
My whole establishment was on so small a 
scale that I could have taken up, not only my 
bed, but my whole house, and walked. There 
I lay that night, eating a few crackers. 

Next day I returned to the town and was 
disappointed as usual in obtaining money. So 
after spending the day looking at the plants in 
the gardens of the fine residences and town 
squares, I returned to my graveyard home. 
That I might not be observed and suspected 
of hiding, as if I had committed a crime, I 
always went home after dark, and one night, 
as I lay down in my moss nest, I felt some 
cold-blooded creature in it; whether a snake 
or simply a frog or toad I do not know, but 
instinctively, instead of drawing back my 
hand, I grasped the poor creature and threw 
it over the tops of the bushes. That was 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

the only significant disturbance or fright that 
I got. 

In the morning everything seemed divine. 
Only squirrels, sunbeams, and birds came 
about me. I was awakened every morning by 
these little singers after they discovered my 
nest. Instead of serenely singing their morning 
songs they at first came within two or three 
feet of the hut, and, looking in at me through 
the leaves, chattered and scolded in half-angry, 
half-wondering tones. The crowd constantly 
increased, attracted by the disturbance. Thus 
I began to get acquainted with my bird neigh- 
bors in this blessed wilderness, and after they 
learned that I meant them no ill they scolded 
less and sang more. 

After five days of this graveyard life I saw 
that even with living on three or four cents a 
day my last twenty-five cents would soon be 
spent, and after trying again and again unsuc- 
cessfully to find some employment began to 
think that I must strike farther out into the 
country, but still within reach of town, until 
[78] 



Camping among the "Tombs 

I came to some grain or rice field that had 
not yet been harvested, trusting that I could 
live indefinitely on toasted or raw corn, or 
rice. 

By this time I was becoming faint, and in 
making the journey to the town was alarmed to 
find myself growing staggery and giddy. The 
ground ahead seemed to be rising up in front 
of me, and the little streams in the ditches on 
the sides of the road seemed to be flowing up 
hill. Then I realized that I was becoming dan- 
gerously hungry and became more than ever 
anxious to receive that money package. 

To my delight this fifth or sixth morning, 
when I inquired if the money package had 
come, the clerk replied that it had, but that he 
could not deliver it without my being identi- 
fied. I said, "Well, here! read my brother's 
letter," handing it to him. "It states the 
amount in the package, where it came from, 
the day it was put into the oflSce at Portage 
City, and I should think that would be enough." 
He said, "No, that is not enough. How do I 
[79] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

know that this letter is yours ? You may have 
stolen it. How do I know that you are John 
Muir?" 

I said, "Well, don't you see that this letter 
indicates that I am a botanist? For in it my 
brother says/ 1 hope you are having a good time 
and finding many new plants/ Now, you say 
that I might have stolen this letter from John 
Muir, and in that way have become aware of 
there being a money package to arrive from 
Portage for him. But the letter proves that 
John Muir must be a botanist, and though, as 
you say, his letter might have been stolen, it 
would hardly be likely that the robber would 
be able to steal John Muir's knowledge of 
botany. Now I suppose, of course, that you 
have been to school and know something of 
botany. Examine me and see if I know any- 
thing about it." 

At this he laughed good-naturedly, evidently 

feeling the force of my argument, and, perhaps, 

pitying me on account of looking pale and 

hungry, he turned and rapped at the dooi* of 

[80] 



Camping among the "Tombs 

a private office — probably the Manager's — 
called him out and said, "Mr. So and So, here 
IS a man who has inquired every day for the 
last week or so for a money package from Por- 
tage, Wisconsin. He is a stranger in the city 
with no one to identify him. He states correctly 
the amount and the name of the sender. He has 
shown me a letter which indicates that Mr. 
Muir is a botanist, and that although a travel- 
ing companion may have stolen Mr. Muir's 
letter, he could not have stolen his botany, and 
requests us to examine him." 

The head official smiled, took a good stare 
into my face, waved his hand, and said, "Let 
him have it." Gladly I pocketed my money, 
and had not gone along the street more than 
a few rods before I met a very large negro 
woman with a tray of gingerbread, in which I 
immediately invested some of my new wealth, 
and walked rejoicingly, munching along the 
street, making no attempt to conceal the plea- 
sure I had in eating. Then, still hunting for 
more food, I found a sort of eating-place in 
[8i] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

a market and had a large regular meal on 
top of the gingerbread! Thus my "marching 
through Georgia" terminated handsomely in a 
jubilee of bread. 



CHAPTER V 

THROUGH FLORIDA SWAMPS AND FORESTS 

OF the people of the States that I have 
now passed, I best Hke the Georgians. 
They have charming manners, and 
their dwellings are mostly larger and better 
than those of adjacent States. However costly 
or ornamental their homes or their manners, 
they do not, like those of the New Englander, 
appear as the fruits of intense and painful sac- 
rifice and training, but are entirely divested of 
artificial weights and measures, and seem to 
pervade and twine about their characters as 
spontaneous growths with the durability and 
charm of living nature. 

In particular, Georgians, even the common- 
est, have a most charmingly cordial way of say- 
ing to strangers, as they proceed on their jour- 
ney, "I wish you well, sir." The negroes of 
Georgia, too, are extremely mannerly and po- 
lite, and appear always to be delighted to find 
opportunity for obliging anybody. 
[83 ] 



A Thousand'Mik Walk 

Athens contains many beautiful residences. 
I never before saw so much about a home that 
was so evidently done for beauty only, although 
this is by no means a universal characteristic of 
Georgian homes. Nearly all well-to-do farmers* 
families in Georgia and Tennessee spin and 
weave their own cloth. This work is almost all 
done by the mothers and daughters and con- 
sumes much of their time. 

The traces of war are not only apparent on 
the broken fields, burnt fences, mills, and woods 
ruthlessly slaughtered, but also on the counte- 
nances of the people. A few years after a forest 
has been burned another generation of bright 
and happy trees arises, in purest, freshest vigor; 
only the old trees, wholly or half dead, bear 
marks of the calamity. So with the people of 
this war-field. Happy, unscarred, and unclouded 
youth is growing up around the aged, half- 
consumed, and fallen parents, who bear in sad 
measure the ineffaceable marks of the farth- 
est-reaching and most infernal of all civilized 
calamities. 

[84I 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

Since the commencement of my floral pil- 
grimage I have seen much that is not only new, 
but altogether unallied, unacquainted with the 
plants of my former life. I have seen magno- 
lias, tupelo, live-oak, Kentucky oak, tilland- 
sia, long-leafed pine, palmetto, schrankia, and 
whole forests of strange trees and vine-tied 
thickets of blooming shrubs ; whole meadow- 
fuls of magnificent bamboo and lakefuls of lilies, 
all new to me; yet I still press eagerly on to 
Florida as the special home of the tropical 
plants I am looking for, and I feel sure I shall 
not be disappointed. 

The same day on which the money arrived^ 
I took passage on the steamship Sylvan Shore 
for Fernandina, Florida. The daylight part of 
this sail along the coast of Florida was full of 
novelty, and by association awakened memories 
of my Scottish days at Dunbar on the Firth of 
Forth. 

On board I had civilized conversation with a 
Southern planter on topics that are found float- 
ing in the mind of every white man down here 
[85 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

who has a single thought. I also met a brother, 
Scotchman, who was especially interesting and 
had some ideas outside of Southern politics. 
Altogether my half-day and night on board the 
steamer were pleasant, and carried me past 
a very sickly, entangled, overflowed, and un- 
walkable piece of forest. 

It is pretty well known that a short geologi- 
cal time ago the ocean covered the sandy level 
margin, extending from the foot of the AUe- 
ghanies to the present coast-line, and in re- 
ceding left many basins for lakes and swamps. 
The land is still encroaching on the sea, and it 
does so not evenly, in a regular line, but in 
fringing lagoons and inlets and dotlike coral 
islands. 

It is on the coast strip of isles and peninsulas 
that sea-island cotton is grown. Some of these 
small islands are afloat, anchored only by the 
roots of mangroves and rushes. For a few 
hours our steamer sailed in the open sea, ex- 
posed to its waves, but most of the time 
she threaded her way among the lagoons, the 
[86] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

home of alligators and countless ducks and 
waders. 

October 15. To-day, at last, I reached Florida, 
the so-called "Land of Flowers,'' that I had so 
long waited for, wondering if after all my long- 
ings and prayers would be in vain, and I should 
die without a glimpse of the flowery Canaan. 
But here it is, at the distance of a few yards! 
— a flat, watery, reedy coast, with clumps of 
mangrove and forests of moss-dressed, strange 
trees appearing low in the distance. The steamer 
finds her way among the reedy islands like a 
duck, and I step on a rickety wharf. A few steps 
more take me to a rickety town, Fernandina. 
I discover a baker, buy some bread, and with- 
out asking a single question, make for the 
shady, gloomy groves. 

In visiting Florida in dreams, of either day 
or night, I always came suddenly on a close 
forest of trees, every one in flower, and bent 
down and entangled to network by luxuriant, 
bright-blooming vines, and over all a flood of 
bright sunlight. But such was not the gate 
[87] 



A Thousand' Mile Walk 

by which I entered the promised land. Salt 
marshes, belonging more to the sea than to the 
land ; with groves here and there, green and un- 
flowered, sunk to the shoulders in sedges and 
rushes; with trees farther back, ill defined in 
their boundary, and instead of rising in hilly 
waves and swellings, stretching inland in low 
water-like levels. 

We were all discharged by the captain of the 
steamer without breakfast, and, after meeting 
and examining the new plants that crowded 
about me, I threw down my press and little 
bag beneath a thicket, where there was a dry 
spot on some broken heaps of grass and roots, 
something like a deserted muskrat house, and 
applied myself to my bread breakfast. Every- 
thing in earth and sky had an impression of 
strangeness; not a mark of friendly recognition, 
not a breath, not a spirit whisper of sympathy 
came from anything about me, and of course 
I was lonely. I lay on my elbow eating my 
bread, gazing, and listening to the profound 
strangeness. 

[88] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

While thus engaged I was startled from these 
gatherings of melancholy by a rusthng sound 
in the rushes behind me. Had my mind been 
in health, and my body not starved, I should 
only have turned calmly to the noise. But in 
this half-starved, unfriended condition I could 
have no healthy thought, and I at once believed 
that the sound came from an alligator. I fan- 
cied I could feel the stroke of his long notched 
tail, and could see his big jaws and rows of 
teeth, closing with a springy snap on me, as I 
had seen in pictures. 

Well, I don't know the exact measure of my 
fright either in time or pain, but when I did 
come to a knowledge of the truth, my man- 
eating alligator became a tall white crane, hand- 
some as a minister from spirit land — "only 
that." I was ashamed and tried to excuse my- 
self on account of Bonaventure anxiety and 
hunger. 

Florida is so watery and vine-tied that path- 
less wanderings are not easily possible in any 
direction. I started to cross the State by a gap 
[89] 



A I'housand'Mile TValk 

hewn for the locomotive, walking sometimes 
between the rails, stepping from tie to tie, or 
walking on the strip of sand at the sides, gazing 
into the mysterious forest. Nature's own. It is 
impossible to write the dimmest picture of 
plant grandeur so redundant, unfathomable. 

i Short was the measure of my walk to-day. 
A new, canelike grass, or big lily, or gorgeous 
flower belonging to tree or vine, would catch 
my attention, and I would throw down my bag 
and press and splash through the coffee-brown 
water for specimens. Frequently I sank deeper 
and deeper until compelled to turn back and 
make the attempt in another and still another 
place. Oftentimes I was tangled in a laby- 
rinth of armed vines like a fly in a spider-web. 
At all times, whether wading or climbing a tree 
for specimens of fruit, I was overwhelmed with 
the vastness and unapproachableness of the 
great guarded sea of sunny plants. 

Magnolia grandiflora I had seen in Georgia; 
but its home, its better land, is here. Its 
large dark-green leaves, glossy bright above 
[90] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

and rusty brown beneath, gleam and mirror 
the sunbeams most gloriously among countless 
flower-heaps of the climbing, smothering vines. 
It is bright also in fruit and more tropical in 
form and expression than the orange. It speaks 
itself a prince among its fellows. 

Occasionally, I came to a little strip of open 
sand, planted with pine {Pinus palustris or 
Cubensis). Even these spots were mostly wet, 
though lighted with free sunshine, and adorned 
with purple liatris, and orange-colored Osmunda 
cinnamomea. But the grandest discovery of 
this great wild day was the palmetto. 

I was meeting so many strange plants that I 
was much excited, making many stops to get 
specimens. But I could not force my way far 
through the swampy forest, although so tempt- 
ing and full of promise. Regardless of water 
snakes or insects, I endeavored repeatedly to 
force a way through the tough vine-tangles, 
but seldom succeeded in getting farther than a 
few hundred yards. 

It was while feeling sad to think that I was 
[91 ] 



j4 "Thousand- Mile JValk 

only walking on the edge of the vast wood, that 
I caught sight of the first palmetto in a grassy- 
place, standing almost alone. A few magnolias 
were near it, and bald cypresses, but it was not 
shaded by them. They tell us that plants are 
perishable, soulless creatures, that only man is 
immortal, etc. ; but this, I think, is something 
that we know very nearly nothing about. Any- 
how, this palm was indescribably impressive 
and told me grander things than I ever got 
from human priest. 

This vegetable has a plain gray shaft, round 
as a broom-handle, and a crown of varnished 
channeled leaves. It is a plainer plant than the 
humblest of Wisconsin oaks ; but, whether rock- 
ing and rustling in the wind or poised thought- 
ful and calm in the sunshine, it has a power of 
expression not excelled by any plant high or low 
that I have met in my whole walk thus far. 

This, my first specimen, was not very tall, 

only about twenty-five feet high, with fifteen or 

twenty leaves, arching equally and evenly all 

around. Each leaf was about ten feet in length, 

[92] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

the blade four feet, the stalk six. The leaves are 
channeled like half-open clams and are highly 
polished, so that they reflect the sunlight like 
glass. The undeveloped leaves on the top stand 
erect, closely folded, all together forming an 
oval crown over which the tropic light is poured 
and reflected from its slanting mirrors in sparks 
and splinters and long-rayed stars. 

I am now in the hot gardens of the sun, where 
the palm meets the pine, longed and prayed for 
and often visited in dreams, and, though lonely 
to-night amid this multitude of strangers, strange 
plants, strange winds blowing gently, whis- 
pering, cooing, in a language I never learned, 
and strange birds also, everything solid or 
spiritual full of influences that I never before 
felt, yet I thank the Lord with all my heart for 
his goodness in granting me admission to this 
magnificent realm. 

October i6. Last evening when I was in the 
trackless woods, the great mysterious night be- 
coming more mysterious in the thickening dark- 
ness, I gave up hope of finding food or a house 
[93 1 



A "Thousand- Mile W^alk 

bed, and searched only for a dry spot on which 
to sleep safely hidden from wild, runaway ne- 
groes. I walked rapidly for hours in the wet, 
level woods, but not a foot of dry ground could 
I find. Hollow-voiced owls were calling with- 
out intermission. All manner of night sounds 
came from strange insects and beasts, one 
by one, or crowded together. All had a home 
but I. Jacob on the dry plains of Padan- 
aram, with a stone pillow, must have been 
comparatively happy. 

When I came to an open place where pines 
grew, it was about ten o'clock, and I thought 
that now at last I would find dry ground. But 
even the sandy barren was wet, and I had to 
grope in the dark a long time, feeling the ground 
witJi my hands when my feet ceased to plash, 
before I at last discovered a little hillock dry 
enough to lie down on. I ate a piece of bread 
that I fortunately had in my bag, drank some 
of the brown water about my precious hillock, 
and lay down. The noisiest of the unseen 
witnesses around me were the owls, who pro- 
[94] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

nounced their gloomy speeches with profound 
emphasis, but did not prevent the coming of 
sleep to heal weariness. 

In the morning I was cold and wet with dew, 
and I set out breakfastless. Flowers and beauty 
I had in abundance, but no bread. A serious 
matter is this bread which perishes, and, could 
it be dispensed with, I doubt if civilization would 
ever see me again. I walked briskly, watching 
for a house, as well as the grand assemblies of 
novel plants. 

Near the middle of the forenoon I came to a 
shanty where a party of loggers were getting 
out long pines for ship spars. They were the 
wildest of all the white savages I have met. 
The long-haired ex-guerrillas of the mountains 
of Tennessee and North Carolina are uncivil- 
ized fellows; but for downright barbarism these 
Florida loggers excel. Nevertheless, they gave 
me a portion of their yellow pork and hominy 
without either apparent hospitality or a grudge, 
and I was glad to escape to the forest again. 

A few hours later I dined with three men and 
[95] 



A "Thousand- Mile TValk 

three dogs. I was viciously attacked by the lat- 
ter, who undertook to undress me with their 
teeth. I was nearly dragged down backward, 
but escaped unbitten. Liver pie, mixed with 
sweet potatoes and fat duff, was set before me, 
and after I had finished a moderate portion, 
one of the men, turning to his companion, re- 
marked: "Wall, I guess that man quit eatin' 
'cause he had nothin' moire to eat. I'll get him 
more potato." 

Arrived at a place on the margin of a stag- 
nant pool where an alligator had been rolUng 
and sunning himself. "See," said a man who 
lived here, "see, what a track that is! He must 
have been a mighty big fellow. Alligators wal- 
low like hogs and like to lie in the sun. I 'd like 
a shot at that fellow." Here followed a long re- 
cital of bloody combats with the scaly enemy, 
in many of which he had, of course, taken an 
important part. Alligators are said to be ex- 
tremely fond of negroes and dogs, and natu- 
rally the dogs and negroes are afraid of them. 

Another man that I met to-day pointed to a 
[96I 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

shallow, grassy pond before his door. "There," 
said he, "I once had a tough fight with an alli- 
gator. He caught my dog. I heard him howl- 
ing, and as he was one of my best hunters I 
tried hard to save him. The water was only 
about knee-deep and I ran up to the alligator. 
It was only a small one about four feet long, 
and was having trouble in its efforts to drown 
the dog in the shallow water. I scared him and 
made him let go his hold, but before the poor 
crippled dog could reach the shore, he was 
caught again, and when I went at the alligator 
with a knife, it seized my arm. If it had been a 
little stronger it might have eaten me instead 
of my dog." 

I never in all my travels saw more than one, 
though they are said to be abundant in most of 
the swamps, and frequently attain a length of 
nine or ten feet. It is reported, also, that they 
are very savage, oftentimes attacking men in 
boats. These independent inhabitants of the 
sluggish waters of this low coast cannot be 
called the friends of man, though I heard of 
[97] 



A "Thousand- Mile TValk 

one big fellow that was caught young and was 
partially civilized and made to work in harness. 

Many good people believe that alligators 
were created by the Devil, thus accounting for 
their all-consuming appetite and ugliness. But 
doubtless these creatures are happy and fill the 
place assigned them by the great Creator of 
us all. Fierce and cruel they appear to us, but 
beautiful in the eyes of God. They, also, are 
his children, for He hears their cries, cares for 
them tenderly, and provides their daily bread. 

The antipathies existing in the Lord's great 
animal family must be wisely planned, like 
balanced repulsion and attraction in the min- 
eral kingdom. How narrow we selfish, con- 
ceited creatures are in our sympathies! how 
blind to the rights of all the rest of creation! 
With what dismal irreverence we speak of our 
fellow mortals! Though alligators, snakes, etc., 
naturally repel us, they are not mysterious 
evils. They dwell happily in these flowery 
wilds, are part of God's family, unfallen, un- 
depraved, and cared for with the same species 
[98] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

of tenderness and love as is bestowed on angels 
in heaven or saints on earth. 

I think that most of the antipathies which 
haunt and terrify us are morbid productions of 
ignorance and weakness. I have better thoughts 
of those alligators now that I have seen them 
at home. Honorable representatives of the 
great saurians of an older creation, may you 
long enjoy your lilies and rushes, and be 
blessed now and then with a mouthful of ter- 
ror-stricken man by way of dainty ! 

Found a beautiful lycopodium to-day, and 
many grasses in the dry sunlit places called 
"barrens," "hummocks,'* "savannas," etc. 
Ferns also are abundant. What a flood of heat 
and light is daily poured out on these beauti- 
ful openings and intertangled woods! "The 
land of the sunny South," we say, but no 
part of our diversified country is more shaded 
and covered from sunshine. Many a sunny 
sheet of plain and prairie break the continuity 
of the forests of the North and West, and the 
forests themselves are mostly lighted also, 
[99 I 



A T'housand'Mile Walk 

pierced with direct ray lances, or [the sun- 
light] passing to the earth and the lowly plants 
in filtered softness through translucent leaves. 
But in the dense Florida forests sunlight can- 
not enter. It falls on the evergreen roof and 
rebounds in long silvery lances and flashy 
spray. In many places there is not light suffi- 
cient to feed a single green leaf on these dark 
forest floors. All that the eye can reach is just 
a maze of tree stems and crooked leafless vine 
strings. All the flowers, all the verdure, all the 
glory is up in the light. 

The streams of Florida are still young, and 
in many places are untraceable. I expected to 
find these streams a little discolored from the 
vegetable matter that I knew they must con- 
tain, and I was sure that in so flat a country I 
should not find any considerable falls or long 
rapids. The streams of upper Georgia are al- 
most unapproachable in some places on ac- 
count of luxuriant bordering vines, but the 
banks are nevertheless high and well defined. 
Florida streams are not yet possessed of banks 

[ 100 ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

and braes and definite channels. Their waters 
in deep places are black as ink, perfectly 
opaque, and glossy on the surface as if var- 
nished. It often is difficult to ascertain which 
way they are flowing or creeping, so slowly 
and so widely do they circulate through the 
tree-tangles and swamps of the woods. The 
flowers here are strangers to me, but not more 
so than the rivers and lakes. Most streams ap- 
pear to travel through a country with thoughts 
and plans for something beyond. But those of 
Florida are at home, do not appear to be travel- 
ing at all, and seem to know nothing of the sea. 
October 77. Found a small, silvery-leafed 
magnolia, a bush ten feet high. Passed through 
a good many miles of open level pine barrens, 
as bounteously lighted as the " openings'' of 
Wisconsin. The pines are rather small, are 
planted sparsely and pretty evenly on these 
sandy flats not long risen from the sea. Scarcely 
a specimen of any other tree is to be found as- 
sociated with the pine. But there are some 
thickets of the little saw palmettos and a mag- 
[ loi ] 



A "Thousand'MUe Walk 

nificent assemblage of tall grasses, their splen- 
did panicles waving grandly in the warm wind, 
and making low tuneful changes in the glis- 
tening light that is flashed from their bent 
stems. 

Not a pine, not a palm, in all this garden 
excels these stately grass plants in beauty of 
wind-waving gestures. Here are panicles that 
are one mass of refined purple ; others that have 
flowers as yellow as ripe oranges, and stems pol- 
ished and shining like steel wire. Some of the 
species are grouped in groves and thickets like 
trees, while others may be seen waving without 
any companions in sight. Some of them have 
wide-branching panicles like Kentucky oaks, 
others with a few tassels of spikelets drooping 
from a tall, leafless stem. But all of them are 
beautiful beyond the reach of language. I re- 
joice that God has "so clothed the grass of the 
field." How strangely we are blinded to beauty 
and color, form and motion, by comparative 
size! For example, we measure grasses by our 
own stature and by the height and bulkiness 

[ 102 ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

of trees. But what is the size of the greatest 
man, or the tallest tree that ever overtopped 
a grass ! Compared with other things in God's 
creation the difference is nothing. We all are 
only microscopic animalcula. 

October i8. Am walking on land that is almost 
dry. The dead levels are interrupted here and 
there by sandy waves a few feet in height. It 
is said that not a point in all Florida is more 
than three hundred feet above sea-level — a 
country where but little grading is required for 
roads, but much bridging, and boring of many 
tunnels through forests. 

Before reaching this open ground, in a lonely, 
swampy place in the woods, I met a large, mus- 
cular, brawny young negro, who eyed me with 
glaring, wistful curiosity. I was very thirsty 
at the time, and inquired of the man if there 
were any houses or springs near by where I 
could get a drink. "Oh, yes,'' he replied, still 
eagerly searching me with his wild eyes. Then 
he inquired where I came from, where I was 
going, and what brought me to such a wild 
[ 103 ] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

country, where I was liable to be robbed, and 
perhaps killed. 

"Oh, I am not afraid of any one robbing 
me," I said, "for I don't carry anything worth 
stealing/' "Yes," said he, "but you can't 
travel without money." I started to walk on, 
but he blocked my way. Then I noticed that he 
was trembling, and it flashed upon me all at 
once that he was thinking of knocking me down 
in order to rob me. After glaring at my pockets 
as if searching for weapons, he stammered in 
a quavering voice, "Do you carry shooting- 
irons?" His motives, which I ought to have 
noted sooner, now were apparent to me. Though 
I had no pistol, I instinctively threw my hand 
back to my pistol pocket and, with my eyes 
fixed on his, I marched up close to him and 
said, "I allow people to find out if I am armed 
or not." Then he quailed, stepped aside, and 
allowed me to pass, for fear of being shot. This 
was evidently a narrow escape. 

A few miles farther on I came to a cotton- 
field, to patches of sugar cane carefully fenced, 
[ 104 ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

and some respectable-looking houses with gar- 
dens. These little fenced fields look as if they 
were intended to be for plants what cages are 
for birds. Discovered a large, treelike cactus 
in a dooryard; a small species was abundant 
on the sand-hillocks. Reached Gainesville late 
in the night. 

When within three or four miles of the town 
I noticed a light off in the pine woods. As I was 
very thirsty, I thought I would venture toward 
it with the hope of obtaining water. In creep- 
ing cautiously and noiselessly through the 
grass to discover whether or no it was a camp 
of robber negroes, I came suddenly in full view 
of the best-lighted and most primitive of all 
the domestic establishments I have yet seen 
in town or grove. There was, first of all, a big, 
glowing log fire, illuminating the overleaning 
bushes and trees, bringing out leaf and spray 
with more than noonday distinctness, and 
making still darker the surrounding wood. In 
the center of this globe of light sat two negroes. 
I could see their ivory gleaming from the great 
[ 105 1 



A l^housand-Mik Walk 

lips, and their smooth cheeks flashing off light 
as if made of glass. Seen anywhere but in the 
South, the glossy pair would have been taken 
for twin devils, but here it was only a negro 
and his wife at their supper. 

I ventured forward to the radiant presence 
of the black pair, and, after being stared at 
with that desperate fixedness which is said to 
subdue the lion, I was handed water in a gourd 
from somewhere out of the darkness. I was 
standing for a moment beside the big fire, look- 
ing at the unsurpassable simplicity of the es- 
tablishment, and asking questions about the 
road to Gainesville, when my attention was 
called to a black lump of something lying in 
the ashes of the fire. It seemed to be made 
of rubber; but ere I had time for much specu- 
lation, the woman bent wooingly over the 
black object and said with motherly kindness, 
"Come, honey, eat yo' hominy." 

At the sound of "hominy" the rubber gave 
strong manifestations of vitality and proved to 
be a burly little negro boy, rising from the earth 
[ io6 ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

naked as to the earth he came. Had he emerged 
from the black muck of a marsh, we might eas- 
ily have believed that the Lord had manufac- 
tured him like Adam direct from the earth. 

Surely, thought I, as I started for Gaines- 
ville, surely I am now coming to the tropics, 
where the inhabitants wear nothing but their 
own skins. This fashion is sufficiently simple, 
— **no troublesome disguises," as Milton calls 
clothing, — but it certainly is not quite in har- 
mony with Nature. Birds make nests and 
nearly all beasts make some kind of bed for their 
young; but these negroes allow their younglings 
to lie nestless and naked in the dirt. 

Gainesville is rather attractive — an oasis 
in the desert, compared with other villages. 
Its gets its life from the few plantations located 
about it on dry ground that rises islandlike a 
few feet above the swamps. Obtained food and 
lodging at a sort of tavern. 

October ig. Dry land nearly all day. Encoun- 
tered limestone, flint, coral, shells, etc. Passed 
several thrifty cotton plantations with com- 
[ 107 ] 



A "Thousand'Mik Walk 

fort able residences, contrasting sharply with 
the squalid hovels of my first days in Florida. 
Found a single specimen of a handsome little 
plant, which at once, in some mysterious way, 
brought to mind a young friend in Indiana. 
How wonderfully our thoughts and impressions 
are stored! There is that in the glance of a 
flower which may at times control the greatest 
of creation's braggart lords. 

The magnolia is much more abundant here. 
It forms groves and almost exclusively forests 
the edges of ponds and the banks of streams. 
The easy, dignified simpHcity of this noble tree, 
its plain leaf endowed with superb richness of 
color and form, its open branches festooned with 
graceful vines and tillandsia, its showy crim- 
son fruit, and its magnificent fragrant white 
flowers make Magnolia grandiflora the most 
lovable of Florida trees. 

Discovered a great many beautiful poly- 
gonums, petalostemons, and yellow leguminous 
vines. Passed over fine sunny areas of the long- 
leafed and Cuban pines, which were every- 
[ io8 ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

where accompanied by fine grasses and solida- 
goes. Wild orange groves are said to be rather 
common here, but I have seen only Hmes grow- 
ing wild in the woods. 

Came to a hut about noon, and, being weary 
and hungry, asked if I could have dinner. After 
serious consultation I was told to wait, that 
dinner would soon be ready. I saw only the 
man and his wife. If they had children, they 
may have been hidden in the weeds on account 
of nakedness. Both were suffering from ma- 
larial fever, and were very dirty. But they did 
not appear to have any realizing sense of dis- 
comfort from either the one or the other of 
these misfortunes. The dirt which encircled 
the countenances of these people did not, like 
the common dirt of the North, stick on the 
skin in bold union like plaster or paint, but 
appeared to stand out a little on contact like a 
hazy, misty, half-aerial mud envelope, the most 
diseased and incurable dirt that I ever saw, 
evidently desperately chronic and hereditary. 

It seems impossible that children from such 
[ 109 ] 



A T^housand-Mile Walk 

parents could ever be clean. Dirt and dis- 
ease are dreadful enough when separate, but 
combined are inconceivably horrible. The 
neat cottage with a fragrant circumference of 
thyme and honeysuckle is almost unknown 
here. I have seen dirt on garments regularly 
stratified, the various strata no doubt indi- 
cating different periods of life. Some of them, 
perhaps, were annual layers, furnishing, like 
those of trees, a means of determining the 
age. Man and other civilized animals are the 
only creatures that ever become dirty. 

Slept in the barrens at the side of a log. Suf- 
fered from cold and was drenched with dew. 
What a comfort a companion would be in the 
dark loneliness of such nights! Did not dare 
to make a fire for fear of discovery by robber 
negroes, who, I was warned, would kill a man 
for a dollar or two. Had a long walk after night- 
fall, hoping to discover a house. Became very 
thirsty and often was compelled to drink from 
slimy pools groped for in the grass, with the 
fear of alligators before my eyes. 
[ no ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

October 20, Swamp very dense during this 
day's journey. Almost one continuous sheet 
of water covered with aquatic trees and vines. 
No stream that I crossed to-day appeared to 
have the least idea where it was going. Saw 
an alligator plash into the sedgy brown water 
by the roadside from an old log. 

Arrived at night at the house of Captain 
Simmons, one of the very few scholarly, intel- 
ligent men that I have met in Florida. He had 
been an officer in the Confederate army in the 
war and was, of course, prejudiced against the 
North, but polite and kind to me, nevertheless. 
Our conversation, as we sat by the light of the 
fire, was on the one great question, slavery 
and its concomitants. I managed, however, to 
switch off to something more congenial occa- 
sionally — the birds of the neighborhood, the 
animals, the climate, and what spring, summer, 
and winter are like in these parts. 

About the climate, I could not get much in- 
formation, as he had always lived in the South 
and, of course, saw nothing extraordinary in 
[III ] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

weather to which he had always been accus- 
tomed. But in speaking of animals, he at once 
became enthusiastic and told many stories of 
hairbreadth escapes, in the woods about his 
house, from bears, hungry alligators, wounded 
deer, etc. "And now," said he, forgetting in his 
kindness that I was from the hated North, 
"you must stay with me a few days. Deer are 
abundant. I will lend you a rifle and we'll go 
hunting. I hunt whenever I wish venison, and 
I can get it about as easily from the woods 
near by as a shepherd can get mutton out of 
his flock. And perhaps we will see a bear, for 
they are far from scarce here, and there are 
some big gray wolves, too." 

I expressed a wish to see some large alli- 
gators. "Oh, well," said he, "I can take you 
where you will see plenty of those fellows, but 
they are not much to look at. I once got a good 
look at an alligator that was lying at the bottom 
of still, transparent water, and I think that his 
eyes were the most impressively cold and cruel 
of any animal I have seen. Many alligators go 

[ 112] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

out to sea among the keys. These sea alli- 
gators are the largest and most ferocious, and 
sometimes attack people by trying to strike 
them with their tails when they are out fishing 
in boats. 

"Another thing I wish you to see," he con- 
tinued, "is a palmetto grove on a rich hum- 
mock a few miles from here. The grove is 
about seven miles in length by three in breadth. 
The ground is covered with long grass, unin- 
terrupted with bushes or other trees. It is the 
finest grove of palmettos I have ever seen and 
I have oftentimes thought that it would make 
a fine subject for an artist." 

I concluded to stop — more to see this won- 
derful palmetto hummock than to hunt. Be- 
sides, I was weary and the prospect of getting 
a little rest was a tempting consideration after 
so many restless nights and long, hard walks 
by day. 

October 21, Having outlived the sangui- 
nary hunters' tales of my loquacious host, and 
breakfasted sumptuously on fresh venison and 
[ 113 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

"caller" fish from the sea, I set out for the 
grand palm grove. I had seen these dazzling 
sun-children in every day of my walk through 
Florida, but they were usually standing soli- 
tary, or in groups of three or four; but to-day 
I was to see them by the mile. The captain 
led me a short distance through his corn field 
and showed me a trail which would conduct 
me to the palmy hummock. He pointed out 
the general direction, which I noted upon my 
compass. 

"Now," said he, "at the other side of my 
farthest field you will come to a jungle of cat- 
briers, but will be able to pass them if you 
manage to keep the trail. You will find that 
the way is not by any means well marked, for 
in passing through a broad swamp, the trail 
makes a good many abrupt turns to avoid deep 
water, fallen trees, or impenetrable thickets. 
You will have to wade a good deal, and in pass- 
ing the water-covered places you will have to 
watch for the point where the trail comes out 
on the opposite side." 

[114] 



\ .'ffW 










A FLORIDA PALMETTO HUMMOCK, OR "HAMMOCK" 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

I made my way through the briers, which in 
strength and ferocity equaled those of Tennes- 
see, followed the path through all of its dim 
waverings, waded the many opposing pools, 
and, emerging suddenly from the leafy dark- 
ness of the swamp forest, at last stood free 
and unshaded on the border of the sun-drenched 
palm garden. It was a level area of grasses and 
sedges, smooth as a prairie, well starred with 
flowers, and bounded like a clearing by a wall 
of vine-laden trees. 

The palms had full possession and appeared 
to enjoy their sunny home. There was no 
jostling, no apparent effort to outgrow each 
other. Abundance of sunlight was there for 
every crown, and plenty to fall between. I 
walked enchanted in their midst. What a 
landscape! Only palms as far as the eye could 
reach! Smooth pillars rising from the grass, 
each capped with a sphere of leaves, shining 
in the sun as bright as a star. The silence and 
calm were as deep as ever I found in the dark, 
solemn pine woods of Canada, and that con- 
[ "Si 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

tentment which is an attribute of the best of 
God's plant people was as impressively felt 
in this alligator wilderness as in the homes of 
the happy, healthy people of the North. 

The admirable Linnaeus calls palms "the 
princes of the vegetable world." I know that 
there is grandeur and nobility in their char- 
acter, and that there are palms nobler far than 
these. But in rank they appear to me to stand 
below both the oak and the pine. The motions 
of the palms, their gestures, are not very grace-, 
ful. They appear to best advantage when per- 
fectly motionless in the noontide calm and in- 
tensity of light. But they rustle and rock in 
the evening wind. I have seen grasses waving 
with far more dignity. And when our northern 
pines are waving and bowing in sign of wor- 
ship with the winter storm-winds, where is the 
prince of palms that could have the conscience 
to demand their homage! 

Members of this palm congregation were of 
all sizes with respect to their stems ; but their 
glorious crowns were all alike. In develop- 
[ ii6] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

ment there is only the terminal bud to con- 
sider. The young palm of this species emerges 
from the ground in full strength, one cluster 
of leaves arched every way, making a sphere 
about ten or twelve feet in diameter. The out- 
side lower leaves gradually become yellow, 
wither, and break off, the petiole snapping 
squarely across, a few inches from the stem. 
New leaves develop with wonderful rapidity. 
They stand erect at first, but gradually arch 
outward as they expand their blades and 
lengthen their petioles. 

New leaves arise constantly from the center 
of the grand bud, while old ones break away 
from the outside. The splendid crowns are 
thus kept about the same size, perhaps a little 
larger than in youth while they are yet on the 
ground. As the development of the central 
axis goes on, the crown is gradually raised on a 
stem of about six to twelve inches in diameter. 
This stem is of equal thickness at the top and 
at the bottom and when young is roughened 
with the broken petioles. But these petiole- 
[ 117 I 



A Thousand- Mile Walk 

stumps fall off and disappear as they become 
old, and the trunk becomes smooth as if turned 
in a lathe. 

After some hours in this charming forest I 
started on the return journey before night, 
on account of the difficulties of the swamp and 
the brier patch. On leaving the palmettos and 
entering the vine-tangled, half-submerged for- 
est I sought long and carefully, but in vain, for 
the trail, for I had drifted about too incau- 
tiously in search of plants. But, recollecting 
the direction that I had followed in the morn- 
ing, I took a compass bearing and started to 
penetrate the swamp in a direct line. 

Of course I had a sore weary time, pushing 
through the tanglement of falling, standing, and 
half-fallen trees and bushes, to say nothing of 
knotted vines as remarkable for their efficient 
army of interlocking and lancing prickers as for 
their length and the number of their blossoms. 
But these were not my greatest obstacles, nor 
yet the pools and lagoons full of dead leaves 
and alligators. It was the army of cat-briers 
[ 118] 



/>v, 






A 



/' V / 



/ ^^ ''-^ 



//.,,',f. )^v/}d.. ^^,... 



1 r 






o //'V< 



t^l > Ji? /V IViJ 



ivu -^'^J (. ^'i 



^Ll^ 



XT 



-^7 






> i;Ax 




PAGE OF JOURNAL WITH SKETCH SHOWING PALMETTOS IN 
DIFFERENT STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

that I most dreaded. I knew that I would have 
to find the narrow sHt of a lane before dark or 
spend the night with mosquitoes and alligators, 
without food or fire. The entire distance was 
not great, but a traveler in open woods can form 
no idea of the crooked and strange difficulties 
of pathless locomotion in these thorny, watery 
Southern tangles, especially in pitch darkness. 
I struggled hard and kept my course, leaving 
the general direction only when drawn aside 
by a plant of extraordinary promise, that I 
wanted for a specimen, or when I had to make 
the half-circuit of a pile of trees, or of a deep 
lagoon or pond. 

In wading I never attempted to keep my 
clothes dry, because the water was too deep, 
and the necessary care would consume too much 
time. Had the water that I was forced to wade 
been transparent it would have lost much of its 
difficulty. But as it was, I constantly expected 
to plant my feet on an alligator, and therefore 
proceeded with strained caution. The opacity 
of the water caused uneasiness also on account 
[ 119 ] 



A ^thousand-Mile Walk 

of my inability to determine its depth. In many 
places I was compelled to turn back, after 
wading forty or fifty yards, and to try again 
a score of times before I succeeded in getting 
across a single lagoon. 

At length, after miles of wading and wallow- 
ing, I arrived at the grand cat-brier encamp- 
ment which guarded the whole forest in solid 
phalanx, unmeasured miles up and down across 
my way. Alas ! the trail by which I had crossed 
in the morning was not to be found, and night 
was near. In vain I scrambled back and forth 
in search of an opening. There was not even a 
strip of dry ground on which to rest. Every- 
where the long briers arched over to the vines 
and bushes of the watery swamp, leaving 
no standing-ground between them. I began to 
think of building some sort of a scaffold in a 
tree to rest on through the night, but concluded 
to make one more desperate effort to find the 
narrow track. 

After calm, concentrated recollection of my 
course, I made a long exploration toward the 

[ 120 ] 



Florida Swamps and Forests 

left down the brier line, and after scrambling a 
mile or so, perspiring and bleeding, I discov- 
ered the blessed trail and escaped to dry land 
and the light. Reached the captain at sun- 
down. Dined on milk and johnny-cake and 
fresh venison. Was congratulated on my sin- 
gular good fortune and woodcraft, and soon 
after supper was sleeping the deep sleep of 
the weary and the safe. 

October 22. This morning I was easily pre- 
vailed upon by the captain and an ex-judge, 
who was rusticating here, to join in a deer hunt. 
Had a delightful ramble in the long grass and 
flowery barrens. Started one deer but did not 
draw a single shot. The captain, the judge, 
and myself stood at different stations where the 
deer was expected to pass, while a brother of the 
captain entered the woods to arouse the game 
from cover. The one deer that he started took 
a direction different from any which this par- 
ticular old buck had ever been known to take 
in times past, and in so doing was cordially 

cursed as being the "d -dest deer that ever 

[ 121 ] 



A "Thousand" Mile Walk 

ranunshot." To me it appeared as "d dest" 

work to slaughter God's cattle for sport. "They 
were made for us," say these self-approving 
preachers; "for our food, our recreation, or 
other uses not yet discovered." As truthfully 
we might say on behalf of a bear, when he 
deals successfully with an unfortunate hunter, 
"Men and other bipeds were made for bears, 
and thanks be to God for claws and teeth so 
long." 

Let a Christian hunter go to the Lord's 
woods and kill his well-kept beasts, or wild In- 
dians, and it is well; but let an enterprising 
specimen of these proper, predestined victims 
go to houses and fields and kill the most worth- 
less person of the vertical godlike killers, — 
oh! that is horribly unorthodox, and on the 
part of the Indians atrocious murder! Well, 
I have precious little sympathy for the selfish 
propriety of civilized man, and if a war of races 
should occur between the wild beasts and Lord 
Man, I would be tempted to sympathize with 
the bears. 



CHAPTER VI 

CEDAR KEYS 

OCTOBER 23, To-day I reached the 
sea. While I was yet many miles back 
in the palmy woods, I caught the 
scent of the salt sea breeze which, although I 
had so many years lived far from sea breezes, 
suddenly conjured up Dunbar, its rocky coast, 
winds and waves; and my whole childhood, 
that seemed to have utterly vanished in the 
New World, was now restored amid the Florida 
woods by that one breath from the sea. For- 
gotten were the palms and magnolias and the 
thousand flowers that enclosed me. I could 
see only dulse and tangle, long-winged gulls, 
the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, and the 
old castle, schools, churches, and long coun- 
try rambles in search of birds' nests. I do not 
wonder that the weary camels coming from 
the scorching African deserts should be able to 
scent the Nile. 

[ 123 ] 



A Thousand' Mile Walk 

How imperishable are all the impressions 
that ever vibrate one's life ! We cannot forget 
anything. Memories may escape the action of 
will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred 
by the right influence, though that influence be 
light as a shadow, they flash into full stature 
and life with everything in place. For nineteen 
years my vision was bounded by forests, but 
to-day, emerging from a multitude of tropical 
plants, I beheld the Gulf of Mexico stretching 
away unbounded, except by the sky. What 
dreams and speculative matter for thought 
arose as I stood on the strand, gazing out on 
the burnished, treeless plain! 

But now at the seaside I was in difficulty. I 
had reached a point that I could not ford, and 
Cedar Keys had an empty harbor. Would I pro- 
ceed down the peninsula to Tampa and Key 
West, where I would be sure to find a vessel 
for Cuba, or would I wait here, like Crusoe, and 
pray for a ship. Full of these thoughts, I 
stepped into a little store which had a con- 
siderable trade in quinine and alligator and 
[ 124 ] 



Cedar Keys 

rattlesnake skins, and inquired about shipping, 
means of travel, etc. 

The proprietor informed me that one of sev- 
eral sawmills near the village was running, and 
that a schooner chartered to carry a load of 
lumber to Galveston, Texas, was expected at 
the mills for a load. This mill was situated on 
a tongue of land a few miles along the coast 
from Cedar Keys, and I determined to see Mr. 
Hodgson, the owner, to find out particulars 
about the expected schooner, the time she 
would take to load, whether I would be likely 
to obtain passage on her, etc. 

Found Mr. Hodgson at his mill. Stated my 
case, and was kindly furnished the desired in- 
formation. I determined to wait the two weeks 
likely to elapse before she sailed, and go on her 
to the flowery plains of Texas, from any of 
whose ports, I fancied, I could easily find pas- 
sage to the West Indies. I agreed to work for 
Mr. Hodgson in the mill until I sailed, as I had 
but little money. He invited me to his spacious 
house, which occupied a shell hillock and com- 
[ 125 ] 



A nousand-Mile Walk 

manded a fine view of the Gulf and many gems 
of palmy islets, called "keys," that fringe the 
shore like huge bouquets — not too big, how- 
ever, for the spacious waters. Mr. Hodgson's 
family welcomed me with that open, uncon- 
strained cordiality which is characteristic of the 
better class of Southern people. 

At the sawmill a new cover had been put on 
the main driving pulley, which, made of rough 
plank, had to be turned off and smoothed. 
He asked me if I was able to do this job and I 
told him that I could. Fixing a rest and mak- 
ing a tool out of an old file, I directed the engi- 
neer to start the engine and run slow. After 
turning down the pulley and getting it true, 
I put a keen edge on a common carpenter's 
plane, quickly finished the job, and was assigned 
a bunk in one of the employees' lodging-houses. 

The next day I felt a strange dullness and 
headache while I was botanizing along the coast. 
Thinking that a bath in the salt water might 
refresh me, I plunged in and swam a little dis- 
tance, but this seemed only to make me feel 
[ 126 1 



Cedar Keyi 



worse. I felt anxious for something sour, and 
walked back to the village to buy lemons. 

Thus and here my long walk was interrupted. 
I thought that a few days' sail would land me 
among the famous flower-beds of Texas. But 
the expected ship came and went while I was 
helpless with fever. The very day after reach- 
ing the sea I began to be weighed down by in- 
exorable leaden numbness, which I resisted and 
tried to shake off for three days, by bathing in 
the Gulf, by dragging myself about among the 
palms, plants, and strange shells of the shore, 
and by doing a little mill work. I did not fear 
any serious illness, for I never was sick before, 
and was unwilling to pay attention to my feel- 
ings. 

But yet heavier and more remorselessly 
pressed the growing fever, rapidly gaining on 
my strength. On the third day after my arrival 
I could not take any nourishment, but craved 
acid. Cedar Keys was only a mile or two dis- 
tant, and I managed to walk there to buy 
lemons. On returning, about the middle of the 
[ 127] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

afternoon, the fever broke on me like a storm, 
and before I had staggered halfway to the mill 
I fell down unconscious on the narrow trail 
among dwarf palmettos. 

When I awoke from the hot fever sleep, the 
stars were shining, and I was at a loss to know 
which end of the trail to take, but fortunately, 
as it afterwards proved, I guessed right. Sub- 
sequently, as I fell again and again after walk- 
ing only a hundred yards or so, I was careful 
to lie with my head in the direction in which 
I thought the mill was. I ro§e, staggered, and 
fell, I know not how many times, in delirious 
bewilderment, gasping and throbbing with only 
moments of consciousness. Thus passed the 
hours till after midnight, when I reached the 
mill lodging-house. 

The watchman on his rounds found me lying 
on a heap of sawdust at the foot of the stairs. 
I asked him to assist me up the steps to bed, 
but he thought my difficulty was only intoxica- 
tion and refused to help me. The mill hands, 
especially on Saturday nights, often returned 
[ 128 ] 



Cedar Key. 



from the village drunk. This was the cause of 
the watchman's refusal. Feeling that I must 
get to bed, I made out to reach it on hands and 
knees, tumbled in after a desperate struggle, and 
immediately became oblivious to everything. 

I awoke at a strange hour on a strange day 
to hear Mr. Hodgson ask a watcher beside 
me whether I had yet spoken, and when he 
replied that I had not, he said: "Well, you must 
keep on pouring in quinine. That 's all we can 
do." How long I lay unconscious I never 
found out, but it must have been many days. 
Some time or other I was moved on a horse 
from the mill quarters to Mr. Hodgson's house, 
where I was nursed about three months with 
unfailing kindness, and to the skill and care of 
Mr. and Mrs. Hodgson I doubtless owe my life. 
Through quinine and calomel — in sorry abun- 
dance — with other milder medicines, my ma- 
larial fever became typhoid. I had night 
sweats, and my legs became like posts of the 
temper and consistency of clay on account of 
dropsy. So on until January, a weary time. 
[ 129 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

As soon as I was able to get out of bed, I crept 
away to the edge of the wood, and sat day after 
day beneath a moss-draped live-oak, watching 
birds feeding on the shore when the tide was 
out. Later, as I gathered some strength, I 
sailed in a little skiff from one key to another. 
Nearly all the shrubs and trees here are ever- 
green, and a few of the smaller plants are in 
flower all winter. The principal trees on this 
Cedar Key are the juniper, long-leafed pine, 
and live-oak. All of the latter, living and dead, 
are heavily draped with tillandsia, like those 
of Bonaventure. The leaf is oval, about two 
inches long, three fourths of an inch wide, 
glossy and dark green above, pale beneath. 
The trunk is usually much divided, and is ex- 
tremely unwedgeable. The specimen on the op- 
posite page ^ is growing in the dooryard of Mr. 
Hodgson's house. It is a grand old king, whose 
crown gleamed in the bright sky long ere the 
Spanish shipbuilders felled a single tree of this 
noble species. 

^ Of the original journal. 
[ 130 ] 



Cedar Keys 



The live-oaks of these keys divide empire 
with the long-leafed pine and palmetto, but in 
many places on the mainland there are large 
tracts exclusively occupied by them. Like the 
Bonaventure oaks they have the upper side of 
their main spreading branches thickly planted 
with ferns, grasses, small saw palmettos, etc. 
There is also a dwarf oak here, which forms 
dense thickets. The oaks of this key are not, 
like those of the Wisconsin openings, growing 
on grassy slopes, but stand, sunk to the shoul- 
ders, in flowering magnolias, heathworts, etc. 
1 During my long sojourn here as a convales- 
cent I used to lie on my back for whole days 
beneath the ample arms of these great trees, 
listening to the winds and the birds. There 
is an extensive shallow on the coast, close by, 
which the receding tide exposes daily. This is 
the feeding-ground of thousands of waders of 
all sizes, plumage, and language, and they 
make a lively picture and noise when they 
gather at the great family board to eat their 
daily bread, so bountifully provided for them. 
[ 131 1 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

Their leisure in time of high tide they spend 
in various ways and places. Some go in large 
flocks to reedy margins about the islands and 
wade and stand about quarrelling or making 
sport, occasionally finding a stray mouthful to 
eat. Some stand on the mangroves of the soli- 
tary shore, now and then plunging into the 
water after a fish. Some go long journeys in- 
land, up creeks and inlets. [A few lonely old 
herons of solemn look and wing retire to favor- 
ite oaks. It was my delight to watch those 
old white sages of immaculate feather as they 
stood erect drowsing away the dull hours be- 
tween tides, curtained by long skeins of til- 
landsia. White-bearded hermits gazing dream- 
ily from dark caves could not appear more sol- 
emn or more becomingly shrouded from the 
rest of their fellow beings. 

One of the characteristic plants of these keys 
is the Spanish bayonet, a species of yucca, 
about eight or ten feet in height, and with a 
trunk three or four inches in diameter when 
full grown. It belongs to the lily family and 
[ 132 ] 



Cedar Keys 



develops palmlike from terminal buds. The 
stout leaves are very rigid, sharp-pointed and 
bayonet-like. By one of these leaves a man 
might be as seriously stabbed as by an army 
bayonet, and woe to the luckless wanderer who 
dares to urge his way through these armed 
gardens after dark. Vegetable cats of many 
species will rob him of his clothes and claw his 
flesh, while dwarf palmettos will saw his bones, 
and the bayonets will glide to his joints and 
marrow without the smallest consideration for 
Lord Man. 

The climate of these precious'^islets is sim- 
ply warm summer and warmer summer, corre- 
sponding in time with winter and summer in the 
North. The weather goes smoothly over the 
points of union betwixt the twin summers. Few 
of the storms are very loud or variable. The 
average temperature during the day, in De- 
cember, was about sixty-five degrees in the 
shade, but on one day a little damp snow fell. 

Cedar Key is two and one half or three miles 
in diameter and its highest point is forty-four 
I 133 ] 



A Thousand-Mile JValk 

feet above mean tide-water. It is surrounded 
by scores of other keys, many of them looking 
Hke a clump of palms, arranged like a tasteful 
bouquet, and placed in the sea to be kept fresh. 
Others have quite a sprinkling of oaks and 
junipers, beautifully united with vines. Still 
others consist of shells, with a few grasses and 
mangroves, circled with a rim of rushes. Those 
which have sedgy margins furnish a favorite 
retreat for countless waders and divers, espe- 
cially for the pelicans that frequently whiten 
the shore like a ring of foam. 
/ It is delightful to observe the assembling of 
these feathered people from the woods and 
reedy isles; herons white as wave-tops, or blue 
as the sky, winnowing the warm air on wide 
quiet wing; pelicans coming with baskets to 
fill, and the multitude of smaller sailors of the 
air, swift as swallows, gracefully taking their 
places at Nature's family table for their daily 
bread. Happy birds! 

The mockingbird is graceful in form and a 
fine singer, plainly dressed, rather familiar in 
[ 134] 



m-^ 



O7. ^T^^-f^^ ryjnr'A y-'^i. 



.^r 







i^^^ 



SI 



S# 



m~mh 



Cedar Key. 



habits, frequently coming like robins to door- 
sills for crumbs — a noble fellow, beloved by 
everybody. Wild geese are abundant in winter, 
associated with brant, some species of which 
I have never seen in the North. Also great 
flocks of robins, mourning doves, bluebirds, 
and the delightful brown thrashers. A large 
number of the smaller birds are fine singers. 
Crows, too, are here, some of them cawing with 
a foreign accent. The common bob-white quail 
I observed as far south as middle Georgia. 

Lime Key, sketched on the opposite page, is 
a fair specimen of the Florida keys on this part 
of the coast. A fragment of cactus, Opuntia, 
sketched on another page,^ is from the above- 
named key, and is abundant there. The fruit, 
an inch in length, is gathered, and made into 
a sauce, of which some people are fond. This 
species forms thorny, impenetrable thickets. 
One joint that I measured was fifteen inches 
long. 

The mainland of Florida is less salubrious 

* Of the original journal. 

[ 135 1 



A "Thousand'Mik TValk 

than the islands, but no portion of this coast, 
nor of the flat border which sweeps from Mary- 
land to Texas, is quite free from malaria. All 
the inhabitants of this region, whether black or 
white, are liable to be prostrated by the ever- 
present fever and ague, to say nothing of the 
plagues of cholera and yellow fever that come 
and go suddenly like storms, prostrating the 
population and cutting gaps in it like hurri- 
canes in woods. 

The world, we are told, was made especially 
for man — a presumption not supported by all 
the facts. A numerous class of men are pain- 
fully astonished whenever they find anything, 
living or dead, in all God's universe, which they 
cannot eat or render in some way what they 
call useful to themselves. They have precise 
dogmatic insight of the intentions of the Crea- 
tor, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of ir- 
reverence in speaking of their God any more 
than of heathen idols. He is regarded as a civ- 
ilized, law-abiding gentleman in favor either 
of a republican form of government or of a 
[136] 



Cedar Keys 



limited monarchy; believes in the literature 
and language of England ; is a warm supporter 
of the English constitution and Sunday schools 
and missionary societies; and is as purely a 
manufactured article as any puppet of a half- 
penny theater. 

With such views of the Creator it is^ of course, 
not surprising that erroneous views should be 
entertained of the creation. To such properly 
trimmed people, the sheep, for example, is an 
easy problem — food and clothing "for us," 
eating grass and daisies white by divine appoint- 
ment for this predestined purpose, on perceiv- 
ing the demand for wool that would be occa- 
sioned by the eating of the apple in the Garden 
of Eden. 

In the same pleasant plan, whales are store- 
houses of oil for us, to help out the stars in 
lighting our dark ways until the discovery of the 
Pennsylvania oil wells. Among plants, hemp, 
to say nothing of the cereals, is a case of evident 
destination for ships' rigging, wrapping pack- 
ages, and hanging the wicked. Cotton is an- 
[ 137 1 



A "Thousand" Mile Walk 

other plain case of clothing. Iron was made 
for hammers and ploughs, and lead for bullets ; 
all intended for us. And so of other small hand- 
fuls of insignificant things. 

But if we should ask these profound ex- 
positors of God's intentions, How about those 
man-eating animals — lions, tigers, alligators 
— which smack their lips over raw man? Or 
about those myriads of noxious insects that 
destroy labor and drink his blood? Doubtless 
man was intended for food and drink for all 
these? Oh, no! Not at all! These are unresolv- 
able difficulties connected with Eden's apple and 
the Devil. Why does water drown its lord? 
Why do so many minerals poison him? Why 
are so many plants and fishes deadly enemies? 
Why is the lord of creation subjected to the 
same laws of life as his subjects? Oh, all these 
things are satanic, or in some way connected 
with the first garden. 

Now, it never seems to occur to these far- 
seeing teachers that Nature's object in making 
animals and plants might possibly be first of 
[138I 



Cedar Keys 



all the happiness of each one of them, not the 
creation of all for the happiness of one. Why 
should man value himself as more than a small 
part of the one great unit of creation? And 
what creature of all that the Lord has taken 
the pains to make is not essential to the com- 
pleteness of that unit — the cosmos ? The uni- 
verse would be incomplete without man; but 
it would also be incomplete without the small- 
est transmicroscopic creature that dwells be- 
yond our conceitful eyes and knowledge. 

From the dust of the earth, from the common 
elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo 
sapiens. From the same material he has made 
every other creature, however noxious and in- 
significant to us. They are earth-born com- 
panions and our fellow mortals. The fearfully 
good, the orthodox, of this laborious patch- 
work of modern civilization cry "Heresy" on 
every one whose sympathies reach a single 
hair's breadth beyond the boundary epider- 
mis of our own species. Not content with taking 
all of earth, they also claim the celestial coun- 
[ 139 1 



A "Thousand-Mile TValk 

try as the only ones who possess the kind of 
souls for which that imponderable empire was 
planned. 

This star, our own good earth, made many 
a successful journey around the heavens ere 
man was made, and whole kingdoms of crea- 
tures enjoyed existence and returned to dust 
ere man appeared to claim them. After human 
beings have also played their part in Creation's 
plan, they too may disappear without any 
general burning or extraordinary commotion 
whatever. 

Plants are credited with but dim and uncer- 
tain sensation, and minerals with positively 
none at all. But why may not even a mineral 
arrangement of matter be endowed with sensa- 
tion of a kind that we in our blind exclusive 
perfection can have no manner of communica- 
tion with? 

But I have wandered from my object. I 

stated a page or two back that man claimed 

the earth was made for him, and I was going 

to say that venomous beasts, thorny plants, 

[ 140 ] 



Cedar Keys 



and deadly diseases of certain parts of the earth 
prove that the whole world was not made for 
him. When an animal from a tropical climate 
is taken to high latitudes, it may perish of cold, 
and we say that such an animal was never in- 
tended for so severe a climate. But when man 
betakes himself to sickly parts of the tropics 
and perishes, he cannot see that he was never 
intended for such deadly climates. No, he will 
rather accuse the first mother of the cause of 
the difficulty, though she may never have seen 
a fever district; or will consider it a providen- 
tial chastisement for some self-invented form 
of sin. 

Furthermore, all uneatable and uncivilizable 
animals, and all plants which carry prickles, are 
deplorable evils which, according to closet re- 
searches of clergy, require the cleansing chem- 
istry of universal planetary combustion. But 
more than aught else mankind requires burn- 
ing, as being in great part wicked, and if that 
transmundane furnace can be so applied and 
regulated as to smelt and purify us into con- 
[ 141 ] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

formlty with the rest of the terrestrial creation, 
then the tophetization of the erratic genus 
Homo were a consummation devoutly to be 
prayed for. But, glad to leave these ecclesias- 
tical fires and blunders, I joyfully return to 
the immortal truth and immortal beauty of 
Nature. 



CHAPTER VII 

A SOJOURN IN CUBA 

ONE day in January I climbed to the 
housetop to get a view of another of 
the fine sunsets of this land of flowers. 
The landscape was a strip of clear Gulf water, a 
strip of sylvan coast, a tranquil company of shell 
and coral keys, and a gloriously colored sky 
without a threatening cloud. All the winds 
were hushed and the calm of the heavens was 
as profound as that of the palmy islands and 
their encircling waters. As I gazed from one 
to another of the palm-crowned keys, en- 
closed by the sunset-colored dome, my eyes 
chanced to rest upon the fluttering sails of a 
Yankee schooner that was threading the tor- 
tuous channel in the coral reef leading to the 
harbor of Cedar Keys. "There," thought I, 
"perhaps I may sail in that pretty white 
moth.'* She proved to be the schooner Island 
Belle. 

[ 143 ] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

One day soon after her arrival I went over 
the key to the harbor, for I was now strong 
enough to walk. Some of her crew were ashore 
after water. I waited until their casks were 
filled, and went with them to the vessel in their 
boat. Ascertained that she was ready to sail 
with her cargo of lumber for Cuba. I engaged 
passage on her for twenty-five dollars, and 
asked her sharp-visaged captain when he would 
sail. "Just as soon," said he, "as we get a 
north wind. We have had northers enough 
when we did not want them, and now we have 
this dying breath from the south." 

Hurrying back to the house, I gathered my 
plants, took leave of my kind friends, and 
went aboard, and soon, as if to calm the cap- 
tain's complaints, Boreas came foaming loud 
and strong. The little craft was quickly 
trimmed and snugged, her inviting sails spread 
open, and away she dashed to her ocean home 
like an exulting war-horse to the battle. Islet 
after islet speedily grew dim and sank beneath 
the horizon. Deeper became the blue of the 
[ 144 ] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

water, and in a few hours all of Florida van- 
ished. 

This excursion on the sea, the first one after 
twenty years in the woods, was of course ex- 
ceedingly interesting, and I was full of hope, 
glad to be once more on my journey to the 
South. Boreas increased in power and the Is- 
land Belle appeared to glory in her speed and 
managed her full-spread wings as gracefully 
as a sea-bird. In less than a day our norther 
increased in strength to the storm point. 
Deeper and wider became the valleys, and yet 
higher the hills of the round plain of water. 
The flying jib and gaff topsails were lowered 
and mainsails close-reefed, and our deck was 
white with broken wave-tops. 

** You had better go below," said the captain. 
"The Gulf Stream, opposed by this wind, is 
raising a heavy sea and you will be sick. No 
landsman can stand this long." I replied that 
I hoped the storm would be as violent as his 
ship could bear, that I enjoyed the scenery of 
such a sea so much that it was impossible to be 
[145 1 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

sick, that I had long waited in the woods for 
just such a storm, and that, now that the pre- 
cious thing had come, I would remain on deck 
and enjoy it. "Well," said he, " if you can stand 
this, you are the first landsman I ever saw that 
could." 

I remained on deck, holding on by a rope 
to keep from being washed overboard, and 
watched the behavior of the Belle as she dared 
nobly on ; but my attention was mostly directed 
among the glorious fields of foam-topped waves. 
The wind had a mysterious voice and carried 
nothing now of the songs of birds or of the rus- 
tling of palms and fragrant vines. Its burden 
was gathered from a stormy expanse of crested 
waves and briny tangles. I could see no striving 
in those magnificent wave-motions, no raging; 
all the storm was apparently inspired with na- 
ture's beauty and harmony. Every wave was 
obedient and harmonious as the smoothest 
ripple of a forest lake, and after dark all the 
water was phosphorescent like silver fire, a 
glorious sight. 

[ 146 1 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

Our luminous storm was all too short for 
me. Cuba's rock-waves loomed 'above the 
white waters early in the morning. The sailors, 
accustomed to detect the faintest land line, 
pointed out well-known guiding harbor-marks 
back of the Morro Castle long before I could 
see them through the flying spray. We sailed 
landward for several hours, the misty shore be- 
coming gradually more earthlike. A flock of 
white-plumaged ships was departing from the 
Havana harbor, or, like us, seeking to enter 
it. No sooner had our little schooner flapped 
her sails in the lee of the Castle than she 
was boarded by a swarm of daintily dressed 
officials who were good-naturedly and good- 
gesturedly making all sorts of inquiries, while 
our busy captain, paying little attention to 
them, was giving orders to his crew. 

The neck of the harbor is narrow and it is 
seldom possible to sail in to appointed anchor- 
age without the aid of a steam tug. Our cap- 
tain wished to save his money, but after much 
profitless tacking was compelled to take the 
[ 147] 



f 

I 

/ 

I 



^ "Thousand'Mile Walk 

proffered aid of steam, when we soon reached 
our quiet mid-harbor quarters and dropped 
anchor among ships of every size from every 
sea. • 

I was still four or five hundred yards from 
land and could determine no plant in sight ex- 
cepting the long arched leaf banners of the 
banana and the palm, which made a brave 
show on the Morro Hill. When we were ap- 
proaching the land, I observed that in some 
places it was distinctly yellow, and I wondered 
while we were yet some miles distant whether 
the color belonged to the ground or to sheets of 
flowers. From our harbor home I could now 
see that the color was plant-gold. On one side 
of the harbor was a city of these yellow plants; 
on the other, a city of yellow stucco houses, 
narrowly and confusedly congregated. 

"Do you want to go ashore?" said the cap- 
tain to me. "Yes," I replied, "but I wish to go 
to the plant side of the harbor." "Oh, well," 
he said, "come with me now. There are some 
fine squares and gardens in the city, full of all 
[ 148] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

sorts of trees and flowers. Enjoy these to-day, 
and some other day we will all go over the 
Morro Hill with you and gather shells. All 
kinds of shells are over there; but these yellow 
slopes that you see are covered only with 
weeds." 

We jumped into the boat and a couple of 
sailors pulled us to the thronged, noisy wharf. 
It was Sunday afternoon/ the noisiest day of 
a Havana week. Cathedral bells and prayers 
in the forenoon, theaters and bull-fight bells 
and bellowings in the afternoon! Lowly whis- 
pered prayers to the saints and the Virgin, fol- 
lowed by shouts of praise or reproach to bulls 
and matadors! I made free with fine oranges 
and bananas and many other fruits. Pineapple 
I had never seen before. Wandered about the 
narrow streets, stunned with the babel of 
strange sounds and sights; went gazing, also, 
among the gorgeously flowered garden squares, 
and then waited among some boxed mer- 
chandise until our captain, detained by busi- 

1 Doubtless January 12, 1868. 
[ 149 1 



A T^housand'Mile Walk 

ness, arrived. Was glad to escape to our little 
schooner Belle again, weary and heavy laden 
with excitement and tempting fruits. 

As night came on, a thousand lights starred 
the great town. I was now in one of my happy 
dreamlands, the fairest of West India islands. 
But how, I wondered, shall I be able to escape 
from this great city confusion? How shall I 
reach nature in this delectable land.'' Consult- 
ing my map, I longed to climb the central moun- 
tain range of the island and trace it through all 
its forests and valleys and over its summit 
peaks, a distance of seven or eight hundred 
miles. But alas ! though out of Florida swamps, 
fever was yet weighing me down, and a mile of 
city walking was quite exhausting. The weather 
too was oppressively warm and sultry. 

January i6. During the few days since our 
arrival the sun usually has risen unclouded, 
pouring down pure gold, rich and dense, for 
one or two hours. Then islandlike masses of 
white-edged cumuli suddenly appeared, grew 
to storm size, and in a few minutes discharged 
[150] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

rain in tepid plashing bucketfuls, accompanied 
with high wind. This was followed by a short 
space of calm, half-cloudy sky, delightfully 
fragrant with flowers, and again the air would 
become hot, thick, and sultry. 

This weather, as may readily be perceived, 
was severe to one so weak and feverish, and 
after a dozen trials of strength over the Morro 
Hill and along the coast northward for shells 
and flowers, I was sadly compelled to see that 
no enthusiasm could enable me to walk to the 
interior. So I was obliged to limit my re- 
searches to within ten or twelve miles of 
Havana. Captain Parsons offered his ship as 
my headquarters, and my weakness prevented 
me from spending a single night ashore. 

The daily programme for nearly all the 
month that I spent here was about as follows : 
After breakfast a sailor rowed me ashore on the 
north side of the harbor. A few minutes' walk 
took me past the Morro Castle and out of sight 
of the town on a broad cactus common, about 
as solitary and untrodden as the tangles of 
[ 151 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

Florida. Here I zigzagged and gathered prizes 
among unnumbered plants and shells along the 
shore, stopping to press the plant specimens and 
to rest in the shade of vine-heaps and bushes 
until sundown. The happy hours stole away 
until I had to return to the schooner. Either 
I was seen by the sailors who usually came for 
me, or I hired a boat to take me back. Ar- 
rived, I reached up my press and a big handful 
of flowers, and with a little help climbed up the 
side of my floating home. 

Refreshed with supper and rest, I recounted 
my adventures in the vine tangles, cactus 
thickets, sunflower swamps, and along the 
shore among the breakers. My flower speci- 
men^, also, and pocketfuls of shells and corals 
had to be reviewed. Next followed a cool, 
dreamy hour on deck amid the lights of the 
town and the various vessels coming and de- 
parting. 

Many strange sounds were heard: the vo- 
ciferous, unsmotherable bells, the heavy thun- 
dering of cannon from the Castle, and the 
[152] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

shouts of the sentinels in measured time. Com- 
bined th^ made the most incessant sharp- 
angled mass of noise that I ever was doomed 
to hear. Nine or ten o'clock found me in a small 
bunk with the harbor Wavelets tinkling outside 
close to my ear. The hours of sleep were filled 
with dreams of heavy heat, of fruitless efforts 
for the disentanglement of vines, or of running 
from curling breakers back to the Morro, etc. 
Thus my days and nights went on. 
i Occasionally I was persuaded by the captain 
to go ashore in the evening on his side of the 
harbor, accompanied perhaps by two or three 
other captains. After landing and telling the 
sailors when to call for us, we hired a carriage 
and drove to the upper end of the city, to a fine 
public square adorned with shady walks and 
magnificent plants. A brass band in imposing 
uniform played the characteristic lance-noted 
martial airs of the Spanish. Evening is the 
fashionable hour for aristocratic drives about 
the streets and squares, the only time that is 
delightfully cool. I never saw elsewhere people 
[ 153 ] 



A "Thousand'Mile Walk 

so neatly and becomingly dressed. The proud 
best-family Cubans may fairly be called beau- 
tiful, are under- rather than over-sized, with 
features exquisitely moulded, and set off with 
silks and broadcloth in excellent taste. Strange 
that their amusements should be so coarse. 
Bull-fighting, brain-splitting bell-ringing, and 
the most piercing artificial music appeal to 
their taste. 

The rank and wealth of Havana nobility, 
when out driving, seems to be indicated by the 
distance of their horses from the body of the 
carriage. The higher the rank, the longer the 
shafts of the carriage, and the clumsier and 
more ponderous are the wheels, which are 
not unlike those of a cannon-cart. A few of 
these carriages have shafts twenty-five feet in 
length, and the brilliant-liveried negro driver 
on the lead horse, twenty or thirty feet in 
advance of the horse in the shafts, is beyond 
calling distance of his master. 

Havana abounds in public squares, which in 
all my random strolls throughout the big town 
[ 154] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

I found to be well watered, well cared for, well 
planted, and full of exceedingly showy and in- 
teresting plants, rare even amid the exhaustless 
luxuriance of Cuba. These squares also con- 
tained fine marble statuary and were furnished 
with seats in the shadiest places. Many of the 
walks were paved instead of graveled. 

The streets of Havana are crooked, laby- 
rinthic, and exceedingly narrow. The sidewalks 
are only about a foot wide. A traveler experi- 
ences delightful relief when, heated and wearied 
by raids through the breadth of the dingy yellow 
town, dodging a way through crowds of men 
and mules and lumbering carts and carriages, 
he at length finds shelter in the spacious, dust- 
less, cool, flowery squares; still more when, 
emerging from all the din and darkness of these 
lanelike streets, he suddenly finds himself out 
in the middle of the harbor, inhaling full- 
drawn breaths of the sea breezes. 

The interior of the better houses which came 
under my observation struck me with the pro- 
fusion of dumpy, ill-proportioned pillars at the 
[155 1 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

entrances and in the halls, and with the spacious 
open-fielded appearance of their enclosed square 
house-gardens or courts. Cubans in general ap- 
pear to me superfinely polished, polite, and 
agreeable in society, but in their treatment of 
animals they are cruel. I saw more downright 
brutal cruelty to mules and horses during the 
few weeks I stayed there than in my whole life 
elsewhere. Live chickens and hogs are tied in 
bunches by the legs and carried to market thus, 
slung on a mule. In their general treatment of 
all sorts of animals they seem to have no 
thought for them beyond cold-blooded, selfish 
interest. 

In tropical regions it is easy to build towns, 
but it is difficult to subdue their armed and 
united plant inhabitants, and to clear fields 
and make them blossom with breadstuff. The 
plant people of temperate regions, feeble, un- 
armed, unallied, disappear under the trampling 
feet of flocks, herds, and man, leaving their 
homes to enslavable plants which follow the 
will of man and furnish him with food. But the 
[ 156 ] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

armed and united plants of the tropics hold their 
rightful kingdom plantfully, nor, since the first 
appearance of Lord Man, have they ever suf- 
fered defeat. 

A large number of Cuba's wild plants circle 
closely about Havana. In five minutes' walk 
from the wharf I could reach the undisturbed 
settlements of Nature. The field of the greater 
portion of my rambling researches was a strip 
of rocky common, silent and unfrequented by 
anybody save an occasional beggar at Nature's 
door asking a few roots and seeds. This natu- 
ral strip extended ten miles along the coast 
northward, with but few large-sized trees and 
bushes, but rich in magnificent vines, cacti- 
composites, leguminous plants, grasses, etc. 
The wild flowers of this seaside field are a 
happy band, closely joined in splendid array. 
The trees shine with blossoms and with light 
reflected from the leaves. The individuality 
of the vines is lost in trackless, interlacing, 
twisting, overhe aping union. 

Our American "South" is rich in flowery 
[ 157] 



A T'housand-Mik Walk 

vines. In some districts almost every tree is 
crowned with them, aiding each other in grace 
and beauty. Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennes- 
see have the grapevine in predominant num- 
bers and development. Farther south dwell the 
greenbriers and countless leguminous vines. 
A vine common among the Florida islets, per- 
haps belonging to the dogbane family, over- 
runs live-oaks and palmettos, with frequently 
more than a hundred stems twisted into one 
cable. Yet in no section of the South are there 
such complicated and such gorgeously flowered 
vine-tangles as flourish in armed safety in the 
hot and humid wild gardens of Cuba. 

The longest and the shortest vine that I 
found in Cuba were both leguminous. I have 
said that the harbor side of the Morro Hill is 
clothed with tall yellow-flowered composites 
through which it is difficult to pass. But there 
are smooth, velvety, lawnlike patches in these 
Compositce forests. Coming suddenly upon one 
of these open places, I stopped to admire its 
greenness and smoothness, when I observed a 
[ 158] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

sprinkling of large papilionaceous blossoms 
among the short green grass. The long com- 
posites that bordered this little lawn were en- 
twined and almost smothered with vines which 
bore similar corollas in tropic abundance. 

I at once decided that these sprinkled flow- 
ers had been blown off the encompassing 
tangles and had been kept fresh by dew and by- 
spray from the sea. But, on stooping to pick 
one of them up, I was surprised to find that it 
was attached to Mother Earth by a short, pros- 
trate, slender hair of a vine stem, bearing, be- 
sides the one large blossom, a pair or two of 
linear leaves. The flower weighed more than 
stem, root, and leaves combined. Thus, in a 
land of creeping and twining giants, we find 
also this charming, diminutive simplicity — 
the vine reduced to its lowest terms. 

The longest vine, prostrate and untwined like 
its little neighbor, covers patches of several hun- 
dred square yards with its countless branches 
and close growth of upright, trifoliate, smooth 
green leaves. The flowers are as plain and un- 
[ 159] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

showy in size and color as those of the sweet 
peas of gardens. The seeds are large and satiny. 
The whole plant is noble in its motions and 
features, covering the ground with a depth of 
unconfused leafage which I have never seen 
equaled by any other plant. The extent of leaf- 
surface is greater, I think, than that of a large 
Kentucky oak. It grows, as far as my obser- 
vation has reached, only upon shores, in a soil 
composed of broken shells and corals, and ex- 
tends exactly to the water-line of the highest- 
reaching waves. The same plant is abundant 
in Florida. 

The cacti form an important part of the plant 
population of my ramble ground. They are 
various as the vines, consisting now of a dimin- 
utive joint or two hid in the weeds, now rising 
into bushy trees, wide-topped, with trunks a 
foot in diameter, and with glossy, dark-green 
joints that reflect light like the silex-varnished 
palms. They are planted for fences, together 
with the Spanish bayonet and agave. 

In one of my first walks I was laboriously 
[ i6o ] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

scrambling among some low rocks gathering 
ferns and vines, when I was startled by finding 
my face close to a great snake, whose body was 
disposed carelessly Hke a castaway rope among 
the weeds and stones. After escaping and com- 
ing to my senses, I discovered that the snake 
was a member of the vegetable kingdom, ca- 
pable of no dangerous amount of locomotion, 
but possessed of many a fang, and prostrate 
as though under the curse of Eden, "Upon thy 
belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat." 

One day, after luxuriating in the riches of 
my Morro pasture, arid pressing many new 
specimens, I went down to the bank of brilliant 
wave-washed shells to rest awhile in their 
beauty, and to watch the breakers that a power- 
ful norther was heaving in splendid rank along 
the coral boundary. I gathered pocketfuls of 
shells, mostly small but fine in color and form, 
and bits of rosy coral. Then I amused myself 
by noting the varying colors of the waves and 
the different forms of their curved and blossom- 
ing crests. While thus alone and free it was 
[ i6i ] 



A "Thousand-Mile TValk 

interesting to learn the richly varied songs, 
or what we mortals call the roar, of expiring 
breakers. I compared their variation with the 
diflferent distances to which the broken wave- 
water reached landward in its farthest-flung 
foam-wreaths, and endeavored to form some 
idea of the one great song sounding forever all 
around the white-blooming shores of the world. 
Rising from my shell seat, I watched a wave 
leaping from the deep and coming far up the 
beveled strand to bloom and die in a mass of 
white. Then I followed the spent waters in 
their return to the blue deep, wading in their 
spangled, decaying fragments until chased back 
up the bank by the coming of another wave. 
While thus playing half studiously, I discovered 
in the rough, beaten deathbed of the wave a 
little plant with closed flowers. It was crouch- 
ing in a hollow of the brown wave-washed rock, 
and one by one the chanting, dying waves 
rolled over it. The tips of its delicate pink 
petals peered above the clasping green calyx. 
*' Surely," said I, as I stooped over it for a mo- 
[ 162] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

ment, before the oncoming of another wave, 
"surely you cannot be Hving here! You must 
have been blown from some warm bank, and 
rolled into this little hollow crack like a dead 
shell/' But, running back after every retiring 
wave, I found that its roots were wedged into 
a shallow wrinkle of the coral rock, and that 
this wave-beaten chink was indeed its dwelling- 
place. 

I had oftentimes admired the adaptation dis- 
played in the structure of the stately dulse and 
other seaweeds, but never thought to find a 
highbred flowering plant dwelling amid waves 
in the stormy, roaring domain of the sea. This 
little plant has smooth globular leaves, fleshy 
and translucent like beads, but green like those 
of other land plants. The flower is about five 
eighths of an inch in diameter, rose-purple, 
opening in calm weather, when deserted by the 
waves. In general appearance it is like a small 
portulaca. The strand, as far as I walked it, 
was luxuriantly fringed with woody Compositce^ 
two or three feet in height, their tops purple 
[ 163 ] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

and golden with a profusion of flowers. Among 
these I discovered a small bush whose yellow 
flowers were ideal; all the parts were present 
regularly alternate and in fives, and all sepa- 
rate, a plain harmony. 

When a page is written over but once it may 
be easily read; but if it be written over and 
over with characters of every size and style, it 
soon becomes unreadable, although not a single 
confused meaningless mark or thought may oc- 
cur among all the written characters to mar 
its perfection. Our limited powers are similarly 
perplexed and overtaxed in reading the inex- 
haustible pages of nature, for they are written 
over and over uncountable times, written in 
characters of every size and color, sentences 
composed of sentences, every part of a char- 
acter a sentence. There is not a fragment in 
all nature, for every relative fragment of one 
thing is a full harmonious unit in itself. All 
together form the one grand palimpsest of 
the world. 

One of the most common plants of my pas- 
[ 164 ] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

ture was the agave. It is sometimes used for 
fencing. One day, in looking back from the top 
of the Morro Hill, as I was returning to the 
Island Belle, I chanced to observe two poplar- 
like trees about twenty-five feet in height. 
They were growing in a dense patch of cactus 
and vine-knotted sunflowers. I was anxious to 
see anything so homelike as a poplar, and so 
made haste towards the two strange trees, mak- 
ing a way through the cactus and sunflower 
jungle that protected them. I was surprised to 
find that what I took to be poplars were agaves 
in flower, the first I had seen. They were ahnost 
out of flower, and fast becoming wilted at the 
approach of death. Bulbs were scattered about, 
and a good many still remained on the branches, 
which gave it a fruited appearance. 

The stem of the agave seems enormous in size 
when one considers that it is the growth of a 
few weeks. This plant is said to make a mighty 
effort to flower and mature its seeds and then to 
die of exhaustion. Now there is not, so far as 
I have seen, a mighty effort or the need of one, 
[ 165] 



A T'housand'Mile Walk 

in wild Nature. She accomplishes her ends with- 
out unquiet effort, and perhaps there is nothing 
more mighty in the development of the flower- 
stem of the agave than in the development of a 
grass panicle. 

Havana has a fine botanical garden. I spent 
pleasant hours in its magnificent flowery ar- 
bors and around its shady fountains. There 
is a palm avenue which is considered wonder- 
fully stately and beautiful, fifty palms in two 
straight lines, each rigidly perpendicular. The 
smooth round shafts, slightly thicker in the 
middle, appear to be productions of the lathe, 
rather than vegetable stems. The fifty arched 
crowns, inimitably balanced, blaze in the sun- 
shine like heaps of stars that have fallen from 
the skies. The stems were about sixty or 
seventy feet in height, the crowns about fifteen 
feet in diameter. 

Along a stream-bank were tall, waving bam- 
boos, leafy as willows, and infinitely graceful in 
wind gestures. There was one species of palm, 
with immense bipinnate leaves and leaflets 
I i66 ] 



A Sojourn in Cuba 

fringed, jagged, and one-sided, like those of 
Adiantum, Hundreds of the most gorgeous- 
flowered plants, some of them large trees, be- 
longing to the Leguminoscs, Compared with 
what I have before seen in artificial flower-gar- 
dens, this is past comparison the grandest. It is 
a perfect metropolis of the brightest and most 
exuberant of garden plants, watered by hand- 
some fountains, while graveled and finely bor- 
dered walks slant and curve in all directions, 
and in all kinds of fanciful playground styles, 
more like the fairy gardens of the Arabian 
Nights than any ordinary man-made pleasure- 
ground. 

In Havana I saw the strongest and the ugliest 
negroes that I have met in my whole walk. The 
stevedores of the Havana wharf are muscled 
in true giant style, enabling them to tumble 
and toss ponderous casks and boxes of sugar 
weighing hundreds of pounds as if they were 
empty. I heard our own brawny sailors, after 
watching them at work a few minutes, ex- 
press unbounded admiration of their strength, 
[167I 



A nousand-Mile Walk 

and wish that their hard outbulging muscles 
were for sale. The countenances of some of 
the negro orange-selling dames express a de- 
vout good-natured ugliness that I never could 
have conceived any arrangement of flesh and 
blood to be capable of. Besides oranges they 
sold pineapples, bananas, and lottery tickets. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BY A CROOKED ROUTE TO CALIFORNIA 

AFTER passing a month in this mag- 
nificent island, and finding that my 
health was not improving, I made up 
my mind to push on to South America while 
my stock of strength, such as it was, lasted. But 
fortunately I could not find passage for any 
South American port. I had long wished to 
visit the Orinoco basin and in particular the 
basin of the Amazon. My plan was to get ashore 
anywhere on the north end of the continent, 
push on southward through the wilderness 
around the headwaters of the Orinoco, until I 
reached a tributary of the Amazon, and float 
down on a raft or skiff the whole length of the 
great river to its mouth. It seems strange that 
such a trip should ever have entered the dreams 
of any person, however enthusiastic and full of 
youthful daring, particularly under the disad- 
vantages of poor health, of funds less than a 
[ 169] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

hundred dollars, and of the insalubrity of the 
Amazon Valley. 

Fortunately, as I said, after visiting all the 
shipping agencies, I could not find a vessel of 
any sort bound for South America, and so made 
up a plan to go North, to the longed-for cold 
weather of New York, and thence to the forests 
and mountains of California. There, I thought, 
I shall find health and new plants and moun- 
tains, and after a year spent in that interesting 
country I can carry out my Amazon plans. 

It seemed hard to leave Cuba thus unseen 
and unwalked, but illness forbade my stay and 
I had to comfort myself with the hope of return- 
ing to its waiting treasures in full health. In 
the mean time I prepared for immediate de- 
parture. When I was resting in one of the Ha- 
vana gardens, I noticed in a New York paper 
an advertisement of cheap fares to California. 
I consulted Captain Parsons concerning a pass- 
age to New York, where I could find a ship for 
California. At this time none of the California 
ships touched at Cuba. 

[ 170 ] 



7^ California 



*^WelI," said he, pointing toward the middle 
of the harbor, "there is a trim Httle schooner 
loaded with oranges for New York, and these 
little fruiters are fast sailers. You had better 
see her captain about a passage, for she must 
be about ready to sail." So I jumped into the 
dinghy and a sailor rowed me over to the fruiter. 
Going aboard, I inquired for the captain, who 
soon appeared on deck and readily agreed to 
carry me to New York for twenty-five dollars. 
Inquiring when he would sail, "To-morrow 
morning at daylight," he replied, "if this 
norther slacks a little; but my papers are made 
out, and you will have to see the American 
consul to get permission to leave on my ship." 

I immediately went to the city, but was un- 
able to find the consul, whereupon I deter- 
mined to sail for New York without any formal 
leave. Early next morning, after leaving the 
Island Belle and bidding Captain Parsons 
good-bye, I was rowed to the fruiter and got 
aboard. Notwithstanding the north wind was 
still as boisterous as ever, our Dutch captain 
[ 171 ] 



A "Thousand-Mile JValk 

was resolved to face it, confident in the strength 
of his all-oak little schooner. 

Vessels leaving the harbor are stopped at the 
Morro Castle to have their clearance papers 
examined; in particular, to see that no runa- 
way slaves were being carried away. The offi- 
cials came alongside our little ship, but did not 
come aboard. They were satisfied by a glance 
at the consul's clearance paper, and with the 
declaration of the captain, when asked whether 

he had any negroes, that he had "not a d d 

one." "All right, then," shouted the officials, 
"farewell! A pleasant voyage to you!" As my 
name was not on the ship's papers, I stayed 
below, out of sight, until I felt the heaving of 
the waves and knew that we were fairly out on 
the open sea. The Castle towers, the hills, the 
palms, and the wave-white strand, all faded in 
the distance, and our mimic sea-bird was at 
home in the open stormy gulf, curtsying to 
every wave and facing bravely to the wind. 

Two thousand years ago our Saviour told 
Nicodemus that he did not know where the 
[ 172 1 



"To California 

winds came from, nor where they were going. 
And now in this Golden Age, though we Gen- 
tiles know the birthplace of many a wind and 
also "whither it is going," yet we know about 
as little of winds in general as those Palestinian 
Jews, and our ignorance, despite the powers of 
science, can never be much less profound than 
it is at present. 

The substance of the winds is too thin for 
human eyes, their written language is too diffi- 
cult for human minds, and their spoken lan- 
guage mostly too faint for the ears. A mechan- 
ism is said to have been invented whereby the 
human organs of speech are made to write 
their own utterances. But without any extra 
mechanical contrivance, every speaker also 
writes as he speaks. All things in the creation 
of God register their own acts. The poet was 
mistaken when he said, " From the wing no scar 
the sky sustains.'' His eyes were simply too 
dim to see the scar. In sailing past Cuba I 
could see a fringe of foam along the coast, but 
could hear no sound of waves, simply because 
[ 173 ] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

my ears could not hear wave-dashing at that 
distance. Yet every bit of spray was sounding 
in my ears. 

The subject brings to mind a few recollec- 
tions of the winds I heard in my late journey. 
In my walk from Indiana to the Gulf, earth 
and sky, plants and people, and all things 
changeable were constantly changing. Even 
in Kentucky nature and art have many a 
characteristic shibboleth. The people differ in 
language and in customs. Their architecture 
is generically different from that of their im- 
mediate neighbors on the north, not only in 
planters' mansions, but in barns and granaries 
and the cabins of the' poor. But thousands of 
familiar flower faces looked from every hill 
and valley. I noted no difference in the sky, 
and the winds spoke the same things. I did 
not feel myself in a strange land. 

In Tennessee my eyes rested upon the first 
mountain scenery I ever beheld. I was rising 
higher than ever before; strange trees were be- 
ginning to appear; alpine flowers and shrubs 
[174] 



"To California 



were meeting me at every step. But these 
Cumberland Mountains were timbered with 
oak, and were not unlike Wisconsin hills piled 
upon each other, and the strange plants were 
like those that were not strange. The sky was 
changed only a little, and the winds not by a 
single detectible note. Therefore, neither was 
Tennessee a strange land. 

But soon came changes thick and fast. After 
passing the mountainous corner of North Car- 
olina and a little way into Georgia, I beheld 
from one of the last ridge-summits of the Alle- 
ghanies that vast, smooth, sandy slope that 
reaches from the mountains to the sea. It is 
wooded with dark, branchy pines which were 
all strangers to me. Here the grasses, which 
are an earth-covering at the North, grow wide 
apart in tall clumps and tufts like saplings. 
My known flower companions were leaving me 
now, not one by one as in Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, but in whole tribes and genera, and com- 
panies of shining strangers came trooping upon 
me in countless ranks. The sky, too, was 
[ 175] 



A "Thousand-Mile TValk 

changed, and I could detect strange sounds in 
the winds. Now I began to feel myself "a 
stranger in a strange land." 

But in Florida came the greatest change of 
all, for here grows the palmetto, and here blow 
the winds so strangely toned by them. These 
palms and these winds severed the last strands 
of the cord that united me with home. Now I 
was a stranger, indeed. I was delighted, aston- 
ished, confounded, and gazed in wonderment 
blank and overwhelming as if I had fallen upon 
another star. But in all of this long, complex 
series of changes, one of the greatest, and the 
last of all, was the change I found in the tone 
and language of the winds. They no longer 
came with the old home music gathered from 
open prairies and waving fields of oak, but 
they passed over many a strange string. The 
leaves of magnolia, smooth like polished steel, 
the immense inverted forests of tillandsia 
banks, and the princely crowns of palms — 
upon these the winds made strange music, 
and at the coming-on of night had overwhelm- 
[ 176] 



T^o California 



ing power to present the distance from friends 
and home, and the completeness of my isola- 
tion from all things familiar. 

Elsewhere I have already noted that when 
I was a day's journey from the Gulf, a wind 
blew upon me from the sea — the first sea 
breeze that had touched me in twenty years. I 
was plodding along with my satchel and plants, 
leaning wearily forward, a little sore from ap- 
proaching fever, when suddenly I felt the salt 
air, and before I had time to think, a whole 
flood of long-dormant associations rolled in 
upon me. The Firth of Forth, the Bass Rock, 
Dunbar Castle, and the winds and rocks and 
hills came upon the wings of that wind, and 
stood in as clear and sudden light as a land- 
scape flashed upon the view by a blaze of light- 
ning in a dark night. 

I like to cling to a small chip of a ship like 
ours when the sea is rough, and long, comet- 
tailed streamers are blowing from the curled 
top of every wave. A big vessel responds awk- 
wardly with mixed gestures to several waves 
[ 177 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

at once, lumbering along like a loose floating 
island. But our little schooner, buoyant as a 
gull, glides up one side and down the other of 
each wave hill in delightful rhythm. As we 
advanced the scenery increased in grandeur 
and beauty. The waves heaved higher and 
grew wider, with corresponding motion. It 
was delightful to ride over this unsullied coun- 
try of ever-changing water, and when looking 
upward from the shallow vales, or abroad over 
the round expanse from the tops of the wave 
hills, I almost forgot at times that the glassy, 
treeless country was forbidden to walkers. How 
delightful it would be to ramble over it on foot, 
enjoying the transparent crystal ground, and 
the music of its rising and falling hillocks, un- 
marred by the ropes and spars of a ship; to 
study the plants of these waving plains and 
their stream-currents ; to sleep in wild weather 
in a bed of phosphorescent wave-foam, or briny 
scented seaweeds ; to see the fishes by night in 
pathways of phosphorescent light; to walk the 
glassy plain in calm, with birds and flocks of 
[ 178] 



"To California 



glittering flying fishes here and there, or by- 
night with every star pictured in its bosom! 

But even of the land only a small portion is 
free to man, and if he, among other journeys 
on forbidden paths, ventures among the ice 
lands and hot lands, or up in the air in balloon 
bubbles, or on the ocean in ships, or down into 
it a little way in smothering diving-bells — in 
all such small adventures man is admonished 
and often punished in ways which clearly show 
him that he is in places for which, to use an 
approved phrase, he was never designed. How- 
ever, in view of the rapid advancement of our 
time, no one can tell how far our star may 
finally be subdued to man's will. At all events 
I enjoyed this drifting locomotion to some 
extent. 

The tar-scented community of a ship is a 
study in itself — a despotism on the small 
territory of a few drifting planks pinned to- 
gether. But as our crew consisted only of four 
sailors, a mate, and the captain, there were no 
signs of despotism. We all dined at one table, 
[ 179 I 



A "Thousand- Mile JValk 

enjoying our fine store of salt mackerel and 
plum duff, with endless abundance of oranges. 
Not only was the hold of our little ship filled 
with loose, unboxed oranges, but the deck also 
was filled up level with the rails, and we had 
to walk over the top of the golden fruit on 
boards. 

Flocks of flying fishes often flew across the 
ship, one or two occasionally falling among 
the oranges. These the sailors were glad to 
capture to sell in New York as curiosities, or 
to give away to friends. But the captain had a 
large Newfoundland dog who got the largest 
share of these unfortunate fishes. He used to 
jump from a dozing sleep as soon as he heard 
the fluttering of their wings, then pounce and 
feast leisurely on them before the sailors could 
reach the spot where they fell. 

In passing through the Straits of Florida the 
winds died away and the sea was smoothed to 
unruffled calm. The water here is very trans- 
parent and of delightfully pure pale-blue color, 
as different from ordinary dull-colored water 
[ i8o] 



^0 California 



as town smoke from mountain air. I could see 
the bottom as distinctly as one sees the ground 
when riding over it. It seemed strange that 
our ship should be upborne in such an ethereal 
liquid as this, and that we did not run aground 
where the bottom seemed so near. 

One morning, while among the Bahama dots 
of islands, we had calm sky and calm sea. The 
sun had risen ya cloudless glory, when I ob- 
served a large flock of flying fish, a short dis- 
tance from us, closely pursued by a dolphin. 
These fish-swallows rose in pretty good order, 
skimmed swiftly ahead for fifty or a hundred 
yards in a low arc, then dipped below the sur- 
face. Dripping and sparkling, they rose again 
in a few seconds and glanced back into the lucid 
brine with wonderful speed, but without appar- 
ent terror. 

At length the dolphin, gaining on the flock, 
dashed into the midst of them, and now all or- 
der was at an end. They rose in scattering dis- 
order, in all directions, like a flock of birds 
charged by a hawk. The pursuing dolphin also 
[ i8i ] 



A Thousand- Mile Walk 

leaped into the air, showing his splendid colors 
and wonderful speed. After the first scattering 
flight all steady pursuit was useless, and the 
dolphin had but to pounce about in the broken 
mob of its weary prey until satisfied with his 
meal. 

We are apt to look out on the great ocean and 
regard it as but a half-blank part of our globe 
— a sort of desert, "a waste of water." But, 
land animals though we be, land is about as 
unknown to us as the sea, for the turbid 
glances we gain of the ocean in general through 
commercial eyes are comparatively worthless. 
Now that science is making comprehensive 
surveys of the life of the sea, and the forms of 
its basins, and similar surveys are being made 
into the land deserts, hot and cold, we may at 
length discover that the sea is as full of life as 
the land. None can tell how far man's knowl- 
edge may yet reach. 

After passing the Straits and sailing up the 
coast, when about opposite the south end of the 
Carolina coast, we had stiff head winds all the 
r 182 1 



To California 



way to New York and our able little vessel was 
drenched all day long. Of course our load of 
oranges suffered, and since they were boarded 
over level with the rail, we had difficulty in 
walking and had many chances of being washed 
overboard. The flying fishes off Cape Hatteras 
appeared to take pleasure in shooting across 
from wave-top to wave-top. They avoided the 
ship during the day, but frequently fell among 
the oranges at night. The sailors caught many, 
but our big Newfoundland dog jumped for them 
faster than the sailors, and so almost monop- 
olized the game. 

When dark night fell on the stormy sea, the 
breaking waves of phosphorescent light were a 
glorious sight. On such nights I stood on the 
bowsprit holding on by a rope for hours in order 
to enjoy this phenomenon. How wonderful 
this light is! Developed in the sea by myriads 
of organized beings, it gloriously illuminates the 
pathways of the fishes, and every breaking 
wave, and in some places glows over large areas 
like sheet lightning. We sailed through large 
[ 183 1 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

fields of seaweed, of which I procured speci- 
mens. I thoroughly enjoyed life in this novel 
little tar-and-oakum home, and, as the end of 
our voyage drew nigh, I was sorry at the 
thought of leaving it. 

We were now, on the twelfth day, approach- 
ing New York, the big ship metropolis. We 
were in sight of the coast all day. The leafless 
trees and the snow appeared wonderfully 
strange. It was now about the end of February 
and snow covered the ground nearly to the 
water's edge. Arriving, as we did, in this rough 
winter weather from the intense heat and gen- 
eral tropical luxuriance of Cuba, the leafless, 
snow-white woods of New York struck us with 
all the novelty and impressiveness of a new 
world. A frosty blast was sweeping seaward 
from Sandy Hook. The sailors explored their 
wardrobes for their long-cast-off woolens, and 
pulled the ropes and managed the sails while 
muffled in clothing to the rotundity of Eskimos. 
For myself, long burdened with fever, the frosty 
wind, as it sifted through my loosened bones, 
[ 184] 



"To California 



was more delicious and grateful than ever was 
a spring-scented breeze. 

We now had plenty of company; fleets of 
vessels were on the wing from all countries. 
Our taut little racer outwinded without ex- 
ception all who, like her, were going to the port. 
Toward evening we were grinding and wedg- 
ing our way through the ice-field of the river 
delta, which we passed with difficulty. Arrived 
in port at nine o'clock. The ship was deposited, 
like a cart at market, in a proper slip, and next 
morning we and our load of oranges, one 
third rotten, were landed. Thus all the pur- 
poses of our voyage were accomplished. 

On our arrival the captain, knowing some- 
thing of the lightness of my purse, told me 
that I could continue to occupy my bed on 
the ship until I sailed for California, getting 
my meals at a near-by restaurant. "This is 
the way we are all doing," he said. Consult- 
ing the newspapers, I found that the first ship, 
the Nebraska, sailed for Aspinwall in about 
ten days, and that the steerage passage to 
[ i8s 1 



A "Thousand'Mik Walk 

San Francisco by way of the Isthmus was only 
forty dollars. 

In the mean time I wandered about the city 
without knowing ^ single person in it. My walks 
extended but little beyond sight of my little 
schooner home. I saw the name Central Park 
on some of the street-cars and thought I would 
like to visit it, but, fearing that I might not be 
able to find my way back, I dared not make the 
adventure. I felt completely lost in the vast 
throngs of people, the noise of the streets, and 
the immense size of the buildings. Often I 
thought I would like to explore the city if, like 
a lot of wild hills and valleys, it was clear of 
inhabitants. 

The day before the sailing of the Panama 
ship I bought a pocket map of California and 
allowed myself to be persuaded to buy a dozen 
large maps, mounted on rollers, with a map of 
the world on one side and the United States on 
the other. In vain I said I had no use for them. 
**But surely you want to make money in Cali- 
fornia, don't you? Everything out there is very 
[ 186] 



"To California 



dear. We'll sell you a dozen of these fine maps 
for two dollars each and you can easily sell them 
in California for ten dollars apiece." I foolishly 
allowed myself to be persuaded. The maps 
made a very large, awkward bundle, but for- 
tunately it was the only baggage I had except 
my little plant press and a small bag. I laid 
them in my berth in the steerage, for they were 
too large to be stolen and concealed. 

There was a savage contrast between life in 
the steerage and my fine home on the little ship 
fruiter. Never before had I seen such a barbar- 
ous mob, especially at meals. Arrived at Aspin- 
wall-Colon, we had half a day to ramble about 
before starting across the Isthmus. Never shall 
I forget the glorious flora, especially for the 
first fifteen or twenty miles along the Chagres 
River. The riotous exuberance of great forest 
trees, glowing in purple, red, and yellow flow- 
ers, far surpassed anything I had ever seen, 
especially of flowering trees, either in Florida 
or Cuba. I gazed from the car-platform en- 
chanted. I fairly cried for joy and hoped that 
[187] 



A "Thousand-Mile IValk 

sometime I should be able to return and en- 
joy and study this most glorious of forests to 
my heart's content. We reached San Francisco 
about the first of April, and I remained there 
only one day, before starting for Yosemite 
Valley.i 

1 followed the Diablo foothills along the San 
Jose Valley to Gilroy, thence over the Diablo 
Mountains to the valley of the San Joaquin 
by the Pacheco Pass, thence down the valley 
opposite the mouth of the Merced River, thence 
across the San Joaquin, and up into the Sierra 
Nevada to the mammoth trees of Mariposa, 
and the glorious Yosemite, and thence down the 
Merced to this place.^ The goodness of the 
weather as I journeyed toward Pacheco was be- 
yond all praise and description — fragrant, mel- 
low, and bright. The sky was perfectly deli- 
cious, sweet enough for the breath of angels; 
every draught of it gave a separate and distinct 

^ At this point the journal ends. The remainder of this 
chapter is taken from a letter written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr 
from the neighborhood of Twenty Hill Hollow in July, 1868. 

2 Near Snelling, Merced County, California. 

[ 188 ] 



"To California 



piece of pleasure. I do not believe that Adam 
and Eve ever tasted better in their balmiest 
nook. 

The last of the Coast Range foothills were 
in near view all the way to Gilroy. Their union 
with the valley is by curves and slopes of inim- 
itable beauty. They were robed with the green- 
est grass and richest light I ever beheld, and 
were colored and shaded with myriads of flow- 
ers of every hue, chiefly of purple and golden 
yellow. Hundreds of crystal rills joined song 
with the larks, filling all the valley with music 
like a sea, making it Eden from end to end. 

The scenery, too, and all of nature in the 
Pass is fairly enchanting. Strange and beauti- 
ful mountain ferns are there, low in the dark 
canons and high upon the rocky sunlit peaks; 
banks of blooming shrubs, and sprinklings and 
gatherings of garment flowers, precious and 
pure as ever enjoyed the sweets of a mountain 
home. And oh! what streams are there! beam- 
ing, glancing, each with music of its own, sing- 
ing as they go, in shadow and light, onward 
[ 189 1 



A Thousand-Mile JValk 

upon their lovely, changing pathways to the 
sea. And hills rise over hills, and mountains 
over mountains, heaving, waving, swelling, in 
most glorious, overpowering, unreadable maj- 
esty. 

When at last, stricken and faint like a crushed 
insect, you hope to escape from all the terrible 
grandeur of these mountain powers, other foun- 
tains, other oceans break forth before you; for 
there, in clear view, over heaps and rows of 
foothills, is laid a grand, smooth, outspread 
plain, watered by a river, and another range 
of peaky, snow-capped mountains a hundred 
miles in the distance. That plain is the valley 
of the San Joaquin, and those mountains are 
the great Sierra Nevada. The valley of the San 
Joaquin is the floweriest piece of world I ever 
walked, one vast, level, even flower-bed, a 
sheet of flowers, a smooth sea, ruffled a little in 
the middle by the tree fringing of the river and 
of smaller cross-streams here and there, from 
the mountains. 

Florida is indeed a "land of flowers," but 
[ 190 ] 



"To California 



for every flower creature that dwells in its most 
delightsome places more than a hundred are 
living here. Here, here is Florida ! Here they 
are not sprinkled apart with grass between as 
on our prairies, but grasses are sprinkled among 
the flowers; not as in Cuba, flowers piled upon 
flowers, heaped and gathered into deep, glow- 
ing masses, but side by side, flower to flower, 
petal to petal, touching but not entwined, 
branches weaving past and past each other, 
yet free and separate — one smooth garment, 
mosses next the ground, grasses above, petaled 
flowers between. 

Before studying the flowers of this valley and 
their sky, and all of the furniture and sounds 
and adornments of their home, one can scarce 
believe that their vast assemblies are perma- 
nent; but rather that, actuated by some plant 
purpose, they had convened from every plain 
and mountain and meadow of their kingdom, 
and that the diff^erent coloring of patches, acres, 
and miles marks the bounds of the various 
tribes and family encampments. 



CHAPTER IX 

TWENTY HILL HOLLOW ^ 

WERE we to cross-cut the Sierra 
Nevada into blocks a dozen miles 
or so in thickness, each section 
would contain a Yosemite Valley and a river, 
together with a bright array of lakes and mead- 
ows, rocks and forests. The grandeur and in- 
exhaustible beauty of each block would be so 
vast and over-satisfying that to choose among 
them would be like selecting slices of bread 
cut from the same loaf. One bread-slice might 
have burnt spots, answering to craters; another 
would be more browned; another, more crusted 
or raggedly cut ; but all essentially the same. In 
no greater degree would the Sierra slices differ 
in general character. Nevertheless, we all would 
choose the Merced slice, because, being easier 
of access, it has been nibbled and tasted, and 

* This is the hub of the region where Mr. Muir spent the 
greater part of the summer of 1868 and the spring of 1869. 

[ 192 ] 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 

pronounced very good; and because of the con- 
centrated form of its Yosemite, caused by cer- 
tain conditions of baking, yeasting, and glacier- 
frosting of this portion of the great Sierra loaf. 
In like manner, we readily perceive that the 
great central plain is one batch of bread — 
one golden cake — and we are loath to leave 
these magnificent loaves for crumbs, however 
good. 

\ After our smoky sky has been washed in the 
rains of winter, the whole complex row of 
Sierras appears from the plain as a simple 
wall, slightly beveled, and colored in horizontal 
bands laid one above another, as if entirely 
composed of partially straightened rainbows. 
So, also, the plain seen from the mountains has 
the same simplicity of smooth surface, colored 
purple and yellow, like a patchwork of irised 
clouds. But when we descend to this smooth- 
furred sheet, we discover complexity in its phys- 
ical conditions equal to that of the mountains, 
though less strongly marked. In particular, 
that portion of the plain lying between the 
[ 193 ] 



A "Thousand-Mile Walk 

Merced and the Tuolumue, within ten miles 
of the slaty foothills, is most elaborately carved 
into valleys, hollows, and smooth undulations, 
and among them is laid the Merced Yosemite 
of the plain — Twenty Hill Hollow. 

This delightful Hollow is less than a mile in 
length, and of just sufficient width to form 
a well-proportioned oval. It is situated about 
midway between the two rivers, and five miles 
from the Sierra foothills. Its banks are formed 
of twenty hemispherical hills ; hence its name. 
They surround and enclose it on all sides, 
leaving only one narrow opening toward the 
southwest for the escape of its waters. The 
bottom of the Hollow is about two hundred 
feet below the level of the surrounding plain, 
and the tops of its hills are slightly below the 
general level. Here is no towering dome, no 
Tissiack, to mark its place; and one may ramble 
close upon its rim before he is made aware of 
its existence. Its twenty hills are as wonder- 
fully regular in size and position as in form. 
They are like big marbles half buried in the 
[ 194 ] 












,1 



/ 






-#'/■ 
%^/l^ 





1 






\ 


1 


.1 

1 .,; 



to 



O 



•'-"5 















Hh. 



* 






;^ 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 

ground, each poised and settled daintily into 
its place at a regular distance from^its fellows, 
making a charming fairy-land of hills, with 
small, grassy valleys between, each valley hav- 
ing a tiny stream of its own, which leaps and 
sparkles out into the open hollow, uniting to 
form Hollow Creek. 

' Like all others in the immediate neighbor- 
hood, these twenty hills are composed of strati- 
fied lavas mixed with mountain drift in vary- 
ing proportions. Some strata are almost wholly 
made up of volcanic matter — lava and cinders 
— thoroughly ground and mixed by the waters 
that deposited them; others are largely com- 
posed of slate and quartz boulders of all de- 
grees of coarseness, forming conglomerates. A 
few clear, open sections occur, exposing an 
elaborate history of seas, and glaciers, and vol- 
canic floods — chapters of cinders and ashes 
that picture dark] days when these bright 
snowy mountains were clouded in smoke and 
rivered and laked with living fire. A fearful 
age, say mortals, when these Sierras flowed 
[ 195 ] 



A T'housand-Mile Walk 

lava to the sea. What horizons of flame! What 
atmospheres of ashes and smoke! 

The conglomerates and lavas of this region 
are readily denuded by water. In the time 
when their parent sea was removed to form 
this golden plain, their regular surface, in great 
part covered with shallow lakes, showed little 
variation from motionless level until torrents 
of rain and floods from the mountains gradu- 
ally sculptured the simple page to the present 
diversity of bank and brae, creating, in the sec- 
tion between the Merced and the Tuolumne, 
Twenty Hill Hollow, Lily Hollow, and the 
lovely valleys of Cascade and Castle Creeks, 
with many others nameless and unknown, seen 
only by hunters and shepherds, sunk in the 
wide bosom of the plain, like undiscovered gold. 
Twenty Hill Hollow is a fine illustration of a 
valley created by erosion of water. Here are 
no Washington columns, no angular El Capi- 
tans. The hollow canons, cut in soft lavas, are 
not so deep as to require a single earthquake at 
the hands of science, much less a baker's dozen 
[ 196] 



Twenty Hill Hollow 

of those convenient tools demanded for the 
making of mountain Yosemites, and our mod- 
erate arithmetical standards are not outraged 
by a single magnitude of this simple, compre- 
hensible hollow. 

The present rate of denudation of this portion 
of the plain seems to be about one tenth of an 
inch per year. This approximation is based 
upon observations made upon stream-banks 
and perennial plants. Rains and winds remove 
mountains without disturbing their plant or 
animal inhabitants. Hovering petrels, the fishes 
and floating plants of ocean, sink and rise in 
beautiful rhythm with its waves; and, in like 
manner, the birds and plants of the plain sink 
and rise with these waves of land, the only dif- 
ference being that the fluctuations are more 
rapid in the one case than in the other. 

In March and April the bottom of the Hol- 
low and every one of its hills are smoothly 
covered and plushed with yellow and purple 
flowers, the yellow predominating. They are 
mostly social Compositce^ with a few claytonias, 
[ 197 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

giHas, eschscholtzias, white and yellow violets, 
blue and yellow lilies, dodecatheons, and eri- 
ogonums set in a half-floating maze of purple 
grasses. There is but one vine in the Hollow 

— the Megarthiza [Echinocystis T. & D.] or 
"Big Root." The only bush within a mile of 
it, about four feet in height, forms so remark- 
able an object upon the universal smoothness 
that my dog barks furiously around it, at a 
cautious distance, as if it were a bear. Some of 
the hills have rock ribs that are brightly colored 
with red and yellow lichens, and in moist nooks 
there are luxuriant mosses — Bartramia, Di- 
cranuniy Funaria, and several Hypnums, In 
cool, sunless coves the mosses are companioned 
with ferns — a Cystopteris and the little gold- 
dusted rock fern, Gymnogramma triangularis. 

The Hollow is not rich in birds. The meadow- 
lark homes there, and the little burrowing 
owl, the killdeer, and a species of sparrow. Oc- 
casionally a few ducks pay a visit to its waters, 
and a few tall herons — the blue and the white 

— may at times be seen stalking along the 

[ 198 ] 



Twenty Hill Hollow 

creek; and the sparrow hawk and gray eagle ^ 
come to hunt. The lark, who does nearly all 
the singing for the Hollow, is not identical 
in species with the meadowlark of the East, 
though closely resembling it; richer flowers and 
skies have inspired him with a better song than 
was ever known to the Atlantic lark. 

I have noted three distinct lark-songs here. 
The words of the first, which I committed to 
memory at one of their special meetings, spelled 
as sung, are, "Wee-ro spee-ro wee-o weer-ly 
wee-it." On the 20th of January, 1869, they 
sang "Queed-lix boodle," repeating it with 
great regularity, for hours together, to music 
sweet as the sky that gave it. On the 22d of 
the same month, they sang "Chee chool chee- 
dildy choodildy." An inspiration is this song of 
the blessed lark, and universally absorbable by 
human souls. It seems to be the only bird-song 
of these hills that has been created with any 
direct reference to us. Music is one of the at- 

* Mr. Muir doubtless meant the golden eagle (Jquila 
chrysaJetos), 

[ 199 1 



A Thousand'Mik Walk 

tributes of matter, into whatever forms it may- 
be organized. Drops and sprays of air are 
specialized, and made to plash and churn in the 
bosom of a lark, as infinitesimal portions of 
air plash and sing about the angles and hollows 
of sand-grains, as perfectly composed and pre- 
destined as the rejoicing anthems of worlds; 
but our senses are not fine enough to catch 
the tones. Fancy the waving, pulsing melody 
of the vast flower-congregations of the Hollow 
flowing from myriad voices of tuned petal and 
pistil, and heaps of sculptured pollen. Scarce 
one note is for us ; nevertheless, God be thanked 
for this blessed instrument hid beneath the 
feathers of a lark. 

The eagle does not dwell in the Hollow; he 
only floats there to hunt the long-eared hare. 
One day I saw a fine specimen alight upon a 
hillside. I was at first puzzled to know what 
power could fetch the sky-king down into the 
grass with the larks. Watching him attentively, 
I soon discovered the cause of his earthiness. 
He was hungry and stood watching a long- 

[ 200 ] 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 

eared hare, which stood erect at the door of his 
burrow, staring his winged fellow mortal full 
in the face. They were about ten feet apart. 
Should the eagle attempt to snatch the hare, 
he would instantly disappear in the ground. 
Should long-ears, tired of inaction, venture to 
skim the hill to some neighboring burrow, the 
eagle would swoop above him and strike him 
dead with a blow of his pinions, bear him to 
some favorite rock table, satisfy his hunger, 
wipe off all marks of grossness, and go again to 
the sky. 

Since antelopes have been driven away, the 
hare is the swiftest animal of the Hollow. 
When chased by a dog he will not seek a bur- 
row, as when the eagle wings in sight, but 
skims wavily from hill to hill across connecting 
curves, swift and effortless as a bird-shadow. 
One that I measured was twelve inches in 
height at the shoulders. His body was eighteen 
inches, from nose-tip to. tail. His great ears 
measured six and a half inches in length and 
two in width. His ears — which, notwithstand- 

[ 201 ] 



A T^housand'MUe TValk 

ing their great size, he wears gracefully and be- 
comingly — have procured for him the homely 
nickname, by which he is commonly known, of 
"Jackass rabbit." Hares are very abundant 
over all the plain and up in the sunny, lightly 
wooded foothills, but their range does not ex- 
tend into the close pine forests. 

Coyotes, or California wolves, are occasion- 
ally seen gliding about the Hollow, but they are 
not numerous, vast numbers having been slain 
by the traps and poisons of sheep-raisers. The 
coyote is about the size of a small shepherd- 
dog, beautiful and graceful in motion, with 
erect ears, and a bushy tail, like a fox. Inas- 
much as he is fond of mutton, he is cordially 
detested by "sheep-men" and nearly all cul- 
tured people. 

The ground-squirrel is the most common ani- 
mal of the Hollow. In several hills there is a 
soft stratum in which they have tunneled their 
homes. It is interesting to observe these rodent 
towns in time of alarm. Their one circular 
street resounds with sharp, lancing outcries of 

[ 202 ] 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 






"Seekit, seek, seek, seekit!" Near neighbors, 
peeping cautiously half out of doors, engage 
in low, purring chat. Others, bolt upright on 
the doorsill or on the rock above, shout excitedly 
as if calling attention to the motions and as- 
pects of the enemy. Like the wolf, this little 
animal is accursed, because of his relish for 
grain. What a pity that Nature should have 
made so many small mouths palated like our 
own! 

All the seasons of the Hollow are warm and 
bright, and flowers bloom through the whole 
year. But the grand commencement of the an- 
nual genesis of plant and insect life is governed 
by the setting-in of the rains, in December or 
January. The air, hot and opaque, is then 
washed and cooled. Plant seeds, which for 
six months have lain on the ground dry as if 
garnered in a farmer's bin, at once unfold their 
treasured life. Flies hum their delicate tunes. 
Butterflies come from their coffins, like cotyle- 
dons from their husks. The network of dry 
water-courses, spread over valleys and hollows, 
[ 203 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

suddenly gushes with bright waters, sparkling 
and pouring from pool to pool, like dusty 
mummies risen from the dead and set living 
and laughing with color and blood. The weather 
grows in beauty, like a flower. Its roots in the 
ground develop day-clusters a week or two in 
size, divided by and shaded in foliage of clouds ; 
or round hours of ripe sunshine wave and spray 
in sky-shadows, like racemes of berries half 
hidden in leaves. 

These months of so-called rainy season are 
not filled with rain. Nowhere else in North 
America, perhaps in the world, are Januarys 
so balmed and glowed with vital sunlight. Re- 
ferring to my notes of 1868 and 1869, I find 
that the first heavy general rain of the season 
fell on the i8th of December. January yielded 
to the Hollow, during the day, only twenty 
hours of rain, which was divided among six 
rainy days. February had only three days on 
which rain fell, amounting to eighteen and one- 
half hours in all. March had five rainy days. 
April had three, yielding seven hours of rain. 
[ 204 ] 



Twenty Hill Hollow 

May also had three wet days, yielding nine 
hours of rain, and completed the so-called 
"rainy season'' for that year, which is prob- 
ably about an average one. It must be re- 
membered that this rain record has nothing to 
do with what fell in the night. 

The ordinary rainstorm of this region has 
little of that outward pomp and sublimity of 
structure so characteristic of the storms of the 
Mississippi Valley. Nevertheless, we have expe- 
rienced rainstorms out on these treeless plains, 
in nights of solid darkness, as impressively 
sublime as the noblest storms of the mountains. 
The wind, which in settled weather blows from 
the northwest, veers to the southeast; the sky 
curdles gradually and evenly to a grainless, 
seamless, homogeneous cloud; and then comes 
the rain, pouring steadily and often driven 
aslant by strong winds. In 1869, more than 
three fourths of the winter rains came from 
the southeast. One magnificent storm from 
the northwest occurred on the 21st of March; 
an immense, round-browed cloud came sail- 

[ 205 ] 



A 'Thousand- Mile Walk 

ing over the flowery hills in most imposing 
majesty, bestowing water as from a sea. The 
passionate rain-gush lasted only about one min- 
ute, but was nevertheless the most magnifi- 
cent cataract of the sky mountains that I ever 
beheld. A portion of calm sky toward the 
Sierras was brushed with thin, white cloud- 
tissue, upon which the rain-torrent showed to 
a great height — a cloud waterfall, which, like 
those of Yosemite, was neither spray, rain, nor 
solid water. In the same year the cloudiness 
of January, omitting rainy days, averaged 
0.32; February, 0.13; March, 0.20; April, o.io; 
May, 0.08. The greater portion of this cloudi- 
ness was gathered into a few days, leaving the 
others blocks of solid, universal sunshine in 
every chink and pore. 

At the end of January, four plants were in 
flower: a small white cress, growing in large 
patches; a low-set, umbeled plant, with yellow 
flowers; an eriogonum, with flowers in leafless 
spangles; and a small boragewort. Five or six 
mosses had adjusted their hoods, and were in 
[ 206 ] 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 

the prime of life. In February, squirrels, hares, 
and flowers were in springtime joy. Bright 
plant-constellations shone everywhere about 
the Hollow. Ants were getting ready for work, 
rubbing and sunning their limbs upon the husk- 
piles around their doors; fat, pollen-dusted, 
"burly, dozing humble-bees" were rumbling 
among the flowers; and spiders were busy 
mending up old webs, or weaving new ones. 
Flowers were born every day, and came gush- 
ing from the ground like gayly dressed children 
from a church. The bright air became daily 
more songful with fly-wings, and sweeter with 
breath of plants. 

In March, plant-life is more than doubled. 
The little pioneer cress, by this time, goes to 
seed, wearing daintily embroidered silicles. 
Several claytonias appear; also, a large white 
leptosiphon[?], and two nemophilas. A small 
plantago becomes tall enough to wave and 
show silky ripples of shade. Toward the end of 
this month or the beginning of April, plant-life 
is at its greatest height. Few have any just con- 
[ 207 ] 



A Thousand-Mile Walk 

ception of its amazing richness. Count the 
flowers of any portion of these twenty hills, or 
of the bottom of the Hollow, among the streams : 
you will find that there are from one to ten 
thousand upon every square yard, counting 
the heads of Composites as single flowers. Yel- 
low Composites form by far the greater portion 
of this goldy-way. Well may the sun feed them 
with his richest light, for these shining sunlets 
are his very children — rays of his ray, beams 
of his beam! One would fancy that these Cali- 
fornia days receive more gold from the ground 
than they give to it. The earth has indeed 
become a sky; and the two cloudless skies, ray- 
ing toward each other flower-beams and sun- 
beams, are fused and congolded into one glow- 
ing heaven. By the end of April most of the 
Hollow plants have ripened their seeds and 
died; but, undecayed, still assist the landscape 
with color from persistent involucres and co- 
rolla-like heads of chaffy scales. 
. In May, only a few deep-set lilies and eriog- 
pnums are left alive. June, July, August, and 
[ 208 ] '' 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 

September are the season of plant rest, fol- 
lowed, in October, by a most extraordinary out- 
gush of plant-life, at the very driest time of the 
whole year. A small, unobtrusive plant, Hemi- 
zonia virgata, from six inches to three feet in 
height, with pale, glandular leaves, suddenly 
bursts into bloom, in patches miles in extent, 
like a resurrection of the gold of April. I have 
counted upward of three thousand heads upon 
one plant. Both leaves and pedicles are so 
small as to be nearly invisible among so vast 
a number of daisy golden-heads that seem to 
keep their places unsupported, like stars in the 
sky. The heads are about five eighths of an 
inch in diameter; rays and disk-flowers, yellow; 
stamens, purple. The rays have a rich, furred 
appearance, like the petals of garden pansies. 
The prevailing summer wind makes all the 
heads turn to the southeast. The waxy secre- 
tion of its leaves and involucres has suggested 
its grim name of "tarweed," by which it is 
generally known. In our estimation, it is the 
most delightful member of the whole Compos- 
[ 209 ] 



A "Thousand'Mile Walk 

ite Family of the plain. It remains in flower un- 
til November, uniting with an eriogonum that 
continues the floral chain across December to 
the spring plants of January. Thus, although 
nearly all of the year's plant-life is crowded into 
February, March, and April, the flower circle 
around the Twenty Hill Hollow is never broken. 
The Hollow may easily be visited by tourists 
en route for Yosemite, as it is distant only about 
six miles from Snelling's. It is at all seasons in- 
teresting to the naturalist; but it has little that 
would interest the majority of tourists earlier 
than January or later than April. If you wish to 
see how much of light, life, and joy can be got 
into a January, go to this blessed Hollow. If 
you wish to see a plant-resurrection, — myriads 
of bright flowers crowding from the ground, 
like souls to a judgment, — go to Twenty Hills 
in February. If you are traveling for health, 
play truant to doctors and friends, fill your 
pocket with biscuits, and hide in the hills of 
the Hollow, lave in its waters, tan in its golds, 
bask in its flower-shine, and your baptisms will 

[ 210 ] 



"Twenty Hill Hollow 

make you a new creature indeed. Or, choked 
in the sediments of society, so tired of the 
world, here will your hard doubts disappear, 
your carnal incrustations melt off, and your 
soul breathe deep and free in God's shoreless 
atmosphere of beauty and love. 

Never shall I forget my baptism in this font. 
It happened in January, a resurrection day for 
many a plant and for me. I suddenly found 
myself on one of its hills ; the Hollow overflowed 
with light, as a fountain, and only small, sun- 
less nooks were kept for mosseries and ferneries. 
Hollow Creek spangled and mazed like a river. 
The ground steamed with fragrance. Light, 
of unspeakable richness, was brooding the 
flowers. Truly, said I, is California the Golden 
State — in metallic gold, in sun gold, and in 
plant gold. The sunshine for a whole summer 
seemed condensed into the chambers of that 
one glowing day. Every trace of dimness had 
been washed from the sky; the mountains were 
dusted and wiped clean with clouds — Pacheco 
Peak and Mount Diablo, and the waved blue 

[211 ] 



A "Thousand- Mile Walk 

wall between; the grand Sierra stood along the 
plain, colored in four horizontal bands: — 
the lowest, rose purple; the next higher, dark 
purple; the next, blue; and, above all, the white 
row of summits pointing to the heavens. 

It may be asked. What have mountains fifty 
or a hundred miles away to do with Twenty 
Hill Hollow? To lovers of the wild, these moun- 
tains are not a hundred miles away. Their 
spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make 
them near, as a circle of friends. They rise as 
a portion of the hilled walls of the Hollow. 
You cannot feel yourself out of doors; plain, 
sky, and mountains ray beauty which you feel. 
You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round 
and round, as if warming at a camp-fire. Pres- 
ently you lose consciousness of your own sepa- 
rate existence: you blend with the landscape, 
and become part and parcel of nature. 

THE END 



Index 



Index 



Agave, 165, 166. 

Agrostis scabra. See Grass, 
rough hair. 

Alligators, 96-99, 112, 113. 

Animals, assumed to be made 
for man, 137, 138; man- 
eating, 138; essential to the 
cosmos, 139. 

Apricot vine, 56. 

Aspidium acrostic hoides. See 
Fern, Christmas. 

Asplenium eheneum. See 
Spleenwort, ebony. 

Asplenium filix-fosmina, 33. 

Asters, 26, 31, 34, 46, 56. 

Athens, Georgia, 52. 

Augusta, Georgia, 54, 56. 

Azaleas, 26, 31. 

Bahama islands, 181. 

Banana, 63, 64. 

Beale, Mr., 43. 

Bird neighbors, 75, 78. 

Blairsville, Georgia, 43, 44. 

Blue Ridge, 44. 

Bluebirds, 135. 

Bonaventureburying-ground, 
66-82; oaks in, 6yy 68, 69, 
73; graves of, 71, 72; Muir 
camps in, 73-78. 

Brake, common, 33. 

Brant, 135. 



Bread, importance of, 95. 
Breakers, song of, 162. 
Brier, sensitive, 18, 19. 
Briers, cat, 26, 27; in Florida 

swamps, 115, 118, 120. 
Burkesville, Ky,, 14. 
Butterflies, 68, 69. 
Butternut tree, 12. 

Cactus, 105, 135, 160. 
California, crooked route to, 

169-87; arrival in, 188; 

flowers, 189, 190, 191, 197, 

198, 206-10; the Golden 

State, 211. 
Cameron, Mr., planter, 60- 

63. 
Cape Hatteras, 183. 
Carriages, in Havana, 154. 
Cats, vegetable, 133. 
Caves, Kentucky, 7, 9, 10. 
Cedar Keys, 123-42; size of, 

133. 
Chagres River, 187. 
Chattahoochee River,"47, 48. 
Clinch River, 30, 31. 
Coast Range foothills, 189. 
Composites, 64, 163, 164, 197, 

208, 209. 
Cotton, an unhappy looking 

plant, 13; picking, 51. 
Coyote, 202. 



[21S] 



Index 



Crane, 89. 

Creator and creation, errone- 
ous views of, 136-42. 

Crows, 135. 

Cuba, a sojourn in, 147-68; 
weather of, 150, 151; wild 
plants, 156, 157; flowery 
vines, 157, 158. 

Cubans, personal appearance, 
154; cruel to animals, 156. 

Cumberland Mountains, 16, 
17-46, 175- , 

Cumberland River, 14. 

Cypress, 57, 58, 63, 64. 

Cystopteris. See Fern, blad- 
der. 

Death, our warped ideas of, 

70. 
Deer hunt, 121, 122. 
Deer's tongue, 34 n. 
Dipping snuff, 43. 
Dirt, peculiar to civilization, 

109, no. 
Dolphin, in pursuit of flying 

fish, 181, 182. 
Doves, mourning, 135. 

Eagle, bald, 68, 75. 

Eagle, golden, 199 and «., 

200, 201. 
Electricity, 63. 
Elizabethtown, Ky., 5. 
Emory River, 30. 
Erosion, by water, 196, 197. 

Farmers, in Kentucky, 6; a 
credulous one, 19, 20. 



Fern, bladder, 12, 33, 198. 

Fern, Christmas, 33. 

Fern, cinnamon, 18, 26, 91. 

Fern, Dicksonia, 31, 33. 

Fern, flowering, 18, 26. 

Fern, gold-dusted rock, 198. 

Fernandina, Florida, 87. 

Ferns, at mouth of cave, 7. 

Feud, in Tennessee, 40. 

Fever, Muir's illness in Flor- 
ida, 126-29. 

Fever and ague, 136. 

Fish, flying, 180, 183; pur- 
sued by dolphin, 181, 182. 

Florida, swamps, 83-122; ar- 
rival in, 87; coast of, 87, 88; 
forests, 93, 94, 99, 100; 
streams, 100, loi; a low 
country, 103; a strange 
land, 176; Straits of, 180, 
181. 

Flowering trees, 108, 187. 

Forests, Kentucky, 1-16; 
pine, 51; vine clad, 56; 
Florida, 93, 94, 99, 100. 

Gainesville, Georgia, 47, 105, 
107. 

Gardenia florida. See Jasmine, 
cape. 

Gardens, artificial, 1 1, 167. 

Geese, wild, 135. 

Georgia, river country of, 47- 
65; oaks in, 67, 68, 69; peo- 
ple and homes of, 83, 84; a 
strange land, 175, 176. 

Gerardias, 54. 

Ginseng, 41. 



216 



Index 



Glasgow Junction, Ky., 12, 
13. 

God, a conceited view of, 136, 

137- ^ 
Gold mines, in Tennessee, 35. 
Goldenrod, 26, 56, 72, 109. 
Grapes, 34, 47, 48, 49, 56. 
Grass, rough hair, 58, 59. 
Grasses, 53, 54, 56, 102. 
Grist mills, 35, 36. 
Guerrillas, 25, 27, 28. 
Gymnogramma triangularis^ 

198. 

Hare, long-eared, 200-202. 

Havana, harbor, 147; Sunday 
in, 149; evening in, 153; 
carriages of the nobility, 
154; public squares, 154, 
155; streets, 155; houses, 
I55> 156; botanical garden, 
166, 167; negroes in, 167, 
168. 

Hawk, sparrow, 199. 

Heathwort, 18. 

Hemlock, 31. 

Hermizonia virgata, 209, 210. 

Herons, 132, 134, 198. 

Hiwassee River, 41, 42, 43. 

Hodgson, Mr., sawmill owner, 
125; Muir works for, 126; 
cares for Muir through ill- 
ness, 129. 

Hollow Creek, 195, 211. 

Holly, 43. 

Homo sapiens, unwisdom of, 
139, 141. 

Horse, ferry, 4. 



Horse Cave, 9, 10. 
Hospitality, in the South, 12, 

21, 22, 34, 42, 56, 59, 61, 

64, 126. 
Hunting, selfishness of, 122. 
Hypnum, 12, 31, 198. 

Ilex, 43. 

Indianapolis, Ind., i. 
Island Belle, schooner, 143- 
47. 

Jamestown, Tenn., 20. 
Jasmine, cape, 59. 
Jeffersonville, Ind., i. 

Kentucky, 174; oaks, 2, 6, 15, 
16; streams and wells salty, 
3, 5; farmers, 6; caves, 7, 9, 
10, II; forests, 2, 3, 6, 13; 
a leafy state, 14. 

Kentucky Knobs, 3. 

Killdeer, 198. 

Kingston, Tenn., 32. 

Lark. See Meadowlark. 
Laurels, 26, 31. 
Liatris, 34. 
Lime Key, 135. 
Linnaeus, 116. 
Live-oak. See Oak, live. 
Loggers, Florida, 95. 
Louisville, Ky., i. 
Lycopodium, 99. 

Madisonville, Tenn., 33. 
Madotheca, 31. 
Magnolia, 31, loi, 176. 



[ 217 ] 



Index 



Magnolia grandifloray 64; in 

Florida, 90, 91, 108. 
Mammoth Cave, 10, 11. 
Man-catchers, plant, 27. 
Maps, 186, 187. 
Meadowlark, 198; songs of, 

199, 200. 
Memory, imperishable, 123, 

124, 177. 
Merced River, 188; valley, 

192. 
Mexico, Gulf of, 124. 
Milkworts, 26. 
Mistletoe, 13. 
Mockingbird, 134, 135. 
Montgomery, Tenn., 30. 
Morro Castle, Havana, 147, 

152, 172. 
Morro Hill, 148, 149, 151,158, 

165. 
Moss, Spanish or long, 57, 64, 

68, 176. 
Mosses, 12, 31, 198, 206. 
Mount Yonah, 46. 
Mountaineers, Southern, 44, 

45- 
Munford, Mr., pioneer, 7, 8. 
Munfordville, Ky., 7, 8. 
Murphy, North Carolina, 42, 

43. 

Music, one of the attributes 
of matter, 199, 200. 

Nebraska, ship in which Muir 
sailed for California, 185, 
186, 187. 

Negroes, 13; woman at ford, 
3, 4; queer little boy, 4; ox 



driver, 9; teamster, 32; 
easy-going, 51; polite, 52; 
superstitious, 59; of Geor- 
gia, 83; a dangerous one, 
103, 104; a primitive fam- 
ily, 105-07; in Havana, 167, 
168. 
New York, 184, 185, 186. 

Oak, black, 6, 33. 

Oak, dwarf, 131. 

Oak, live, 67-69, 130, 131. 

Oak, water, 47, 53. 

Oaks, in Kentucky, 2, 6, 15, 

16; in Tennessee, 26. 
Opuntia, 135. 
Osmunda cinnamomea. See 

Fern, cinnamon. 
Osmunda Claytoniana, 18, 

33. 
Osmunda regalis. See Fern, 

flowering. 
Owl, burrowing, 198. 
Owls, 94. 

Palmetto, cabbage, 91-93; a 
fine grove of, 1 13-18. 

Palmetto, saw, loi. 

Palms, 166, 167. 

Parsons, Captain, of the 
Island Belle, 144, 145, 148, 
149, 170, 171. 

Passion flower, 56. 

Pelicans, 134. 

Perkins, Dr., 59. 

Philadelphia, Tenn., 32, 33. 

Phosphorescence at sea, 183. 

Pine barrens, 60, 94, loi. 



[ 218] 



R D j 8 



Index 



Pine, long-leafed, 54, 55, 108, 
130. 

Pines, 26, loi. 

Pinus Cubensis, 91, 108. 

Pinus palustris, 55, 91. 

Plant, striking power of adap- 
tation of, 162, 163. 

Plant-gold, 148. 

Plants and minerals, assumed 
to be made for man, 137, 
138; sensation in, 140. 

Polygalas, 26. 

Polypodium hexagonopterum, 
33- 

Pomegranate, 56, 57. 

Prater, Mr., friend of Mulr's, 
48, 49. 

Pteris aquilina. See Brake, 
common. 



Quail (bob-white), 135. 

Rabbit, jackass, 200-202. 

Rainy season, 204-206. 

Rattlesnakes, 49, 51. 

River, adventure in crossing, 
SO. 

Rivers: Chagres, 187; Chat- 
tahoochee, 47, 48; Clinch, 
31; Cumberland, 14; Em- 
ory, 30; Hiwassee, 41, 42; 
Merced, 188; Salt, 3; Sa- 
vannah, 58. 

Robins, 135. 

Rolling Fork, 3. 

Salt River, 3. 

San Francisco, 188. 



San Joaquin valley, 190. 
Sand dunes, 72. 
Sandy Hook, 184. 
Savannah, Georgia, 6^. 
Savannah River, 58. 
Scale-mosses (Madotheca), 3 1. 
Schrankia, sensitive brier, 18, 

19. 
Scott, Gen. Winfield, 43. 
Scuppernong grape, 49. 
Sea, beautiful in storm, 177, 
178, 183; our ignorance of, 
182. 
Sea-islands, 86. 
Sheep, predestined purpose 

of, 137. 
Sherman, Gen. W. T., 61. 
Ship, enjoyable life on, 177- 

80, 184. 
Sierra Nevada, 190, 192-94, 

212. 
Simmons, Captain, 111-14, 
Solidagoes, 26, 56, 72, 109. ' 
Spanish bayonet, 132, 133. 
Spinning, in mountain cab- 
ins, 37; among Georgia 
farmers, 84. 
Spleenwort, ebony, 33. 
Squirrel, ground, 202, 203. 
Steerage, 187. 
Storm at sea, 145-47, I77» 

178, 183. 
Sunflowers, 3. 
Sunset, gorgeous, 53, 143. 
Swamps, Florida, 83-122; 
vine-tangled, 90, 91, m, 
118, 120; night in, 93-95, 
no. 



[ 219 ] 



Index 



Sylvan Shore, steamship, 85, 
86. 

Table, a peculiar, 59. 

Tarweed, 209. 

Taxodium. See Cypress. 

Tennessee, 15, 174, 175; ferns 
and vines in, 18, 19, 31, 335 
an old farmer, 19, 20; a 
friendly blacksmith, 22-26; 
trees and plants, 26, 31, 33; 
briers, 26, 27; guerrillas, 
27-29; night with a moun- 
taineer, 34; gold mining, 
3S;gristmills, 35, 36; spin- 
ning and weaving, 37; 
grandeur of scenery, 38; a 
feud, 40. 

Thomson, Georgia, 54. 

Thrashers, brown, 135. 

Tillandsia usneoides. See 
Moss, Spanish. 

Track Gap, Tenn., 39. 

Twenty Hill Hollow, 194- 
212; described, 194; created 
by erosion of water, 196; 
flowers in, 197, 198, 206- 
10; birds, 198-201; ani- 



mals, 201-03 ; seasons, 203- 
-^ 10. 

Unaka Mountains, 31, 33. 

Vanilla plant, 34 n. 

Vegetable cats, 133. 

Vines, grape, 34, 47, 48, 49, 
56; in Florida swamps, 90, 
91, III, 118, 120, 158; in 
Cuba, 157-61; in Twenty 
Hill Hollow, 198. 

Vitis rotundifolia, 49. 

Vohn, John, 36. 

Waders, 131, 132. 

Wagon, a remarkable, 45. 

War, marks of, 84. 

Weaving, in mountain cab- 
ins, 37; among Georgia 
farmers, 84. 

Whales, storehouses of oil for 
man, 137. 

Winds, language of, 173-76. 

Wood, Alphonso, Botany, 18, 
24, 34 «., 49 w. 

Yucca, 132. 



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